Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (8 page)

“You all condemned the victim here,” Anne said with some accusation in her tone. “Your perceptions prevented you from ascertaining the truth. Your biases prevented understanding from developing.” She gestured to the smiling face of Jerome Wilkes. “You were prepared to offer sympathy to this man based upon the color of his skin.” And next to Robert Foster. “And to crucify this man because of his. Color is a color, people. A color. That’s all it is. If you condemn Robert Foster because of his, then you condemn me. You condemn all people with skin darker than yours to a life of explaining why they aren’t all bad. Think about it. Please. Thank you.”

Anne never expected applause at these presentations, but it did come, if slowly. First one person would politely clap—
She did do this free, after all
—before a few others—
I did think it was the black man without knowing anything else
—joined in. She stood appreciatively before them as Rabbi Samuel Levin came from his front row seat to stand beside her.

“Dr. Preston, thank you,” Levin said, hugging Anne. “I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say we deeply appreciate your time, and your wise counsel.”

Some nods now, more applause. Anne guessed there were seventy-five minds in the audience that needed enlightening. Maybe she had reached five. Maybe ten. That would be a success.

But there appeared to be one mind that might need something more. Maybe something she could offer.

“There will be refreshments in the Weitzel Room, everyone,” Levin announced. He turned back to Anne as the audience began to filter toward the door. “Will you join us, Dr. Preston?”

The man hadn’t moved. He still sat there, looking downward. “I’d love to. But I may need a minute.”

Rabbi Levin saw what she was looking at. “Yes. Of course. I will see you down the hall.”

Anne walked off the stage to where Darren remained seated. “Hello.”

Darren’s head jerked up, his eyes glistening.

“I’m Anne Preston.” She stretched her hand out.

Darren looked at the hand. Somehow it seemed to be more than an appendage. Much more.

“Darren Griggs, Dr. Preston.” He took her hand, shook it, then let go when he really wanted to hold on for dear life.

Anne took the seat directly in front of Darren and swiveled her body to face him. “Thank you for coming.”

Darren held up the rolled flyer. “I thought...maybe...I thought I might...” The mist in his eyes became a single tear from each that streamed over his cheeks. “I don’t want to die...”

What?
Anne might have expected a hundred reasons why this man would have come here this night, but that was not one of them. “Why do you think that’s a possibility?”

“Because everything I...everyone I love is dying, and...” The tears came fully now. “...and I can’t help them. I can’t help them. I can’t save my own family!”

Anne watched Darren bend forward, his head touching the seat as the sobs came in waves. She placed a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently until the spasms ended and he sat back up.

“I’m...” Darren wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

“Do you want to tell me about it? About your family?”

Darren felt the pressure in his chest build like the forces of a mighty river checked by a dam. The floodgates were closed, but not as tightly as a minute before. Before the question was asked.
Do you want to tell me about your family?
“Yes. Yes I do.”

And he did, talking almost without interruption for fifteen minutes. About Tanya’s murder. About his wife’s spiral into a bottomless depression. About Moises’ destructive behavior. About it all.

And Anne listened, wanting to cry at times. Remembering the news stories, how terrible it had seemed then, and now a living victim of that massacre was here with her, begging for salvation.

Then, as quickly as he began laying out the state of his life, Darren stopped. He was dry. The dam had burst and had let out all that was behind it. His desire for death was no longer there, but the aching he felt for his family was.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said, offering the first words one could after hearing Darren speak of his life, and of his loss.

“Thank you for listening.”

“I’m not done listening,” Anne said. She had to do this.

“What do you mean?” Darren asked.

“You need to talk more. Your family needs to talk. And you need someone to help you with that.”

She was right, Darren knew. But it all seemed so alien now—normalcy. How could they get that back from talking? And there were other considerations. “Thank you, Dr. Preston, but I can’t... I work hard as it is, and with the lawyer’s fees and my wife’s medication, I can’t...”

“Don’t worry about that,” Anne said. “We need to help your family first, and think about the other things later. I’ll make you a deal, though. If you want to do this, I’ll forget the fee if you and your family come to my house for dinner when we have everybody on the right track again. I’d consider that payment enough. You see, I love to cook, but my girl is grown and my boyfriend is into that health-food junk.” She made a face that translated plainly to Darren. It also elicited a smile. “Deal?”

Darren wanted to cry again, but for very different reasons than before. “Deal. Thank you, Dr. Preston.”

Anne handed him one of her cards. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll set up a first appointment.”

“Okay.” Darren put the card away and smiled again. How long had it been since he smiled twice in one day? He couldn’t remember. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

Anne watched Darren walk away, passing Rabbi Levin, who was entering.

“My God, Anne, what did you do to that man in fifteen minutes?” Levin asked. “When I left he looked like the world had fallen on him. Now he’s smiling.”

“The world did fall on him,” Anne said. “Remember the St. Anthony shooting?”

“The church on Crenshaw? Of course. How could anyone forget that? Four children killed.” Levin’s head shook. His grandparents had been dragged from a synagogue in Warsaw more than fifty years before and sent to their death. Now there was death
in
a place of worship. The senselessness of it.

“His daughter was one of them,” Anne said, hating the reality of it. “Tanya Griggs.”

“Oh dear God. No.”

Anne nodded. “After it happened he began feeling a deep hate for white people, something he’d never experienced. It scared him. He wanted it to stop, because he was starting to hate himself for hating others because of their color. Plus his family is in ruins.” She really shouldn’t say anymore, Anne knew. “I’m hoping I can help him, and his family.”

Levin felt ill thinking of the destruction that had been wrought upon this family. Hate. It was the worst of things. Combine it with ignorance and you had a very dangerous force. That was why he had arranged for Anne to speak to members of his flock. They were good people, but they were becoming less and less sensitive to the danger of misplaced hate. The evil they saw in the world was disproportionately of a darker hue, and they were beginning to transfer their fear of real violence to fear of anyone who looked like the criminals plastered on the news. Compassion was fading from their belief systems. That frightened Levin, because it was the same thing that had happened in Nazi Germany so long ago. Induced fear became hate. Then it became institutionalized bias. Then worse. That road had been traveled. No more. Never again, especially by his people.

“Anne, you are a good person,” Levin said. “Maybe I can ask Ellis to find you a spot in the Cabinet. They could use people like you.”

Anne chuckled at the complimentary suggestion. Levin was a major fund-raiser for the Democrats, and had an ear in the White House in the form of Chief of Staff Ellis Gonzales. Levin’s son had been a college classmate of his, and the bond stretched from family to family.

“I’m flying out for a meeting with him on Friday,” Levin said wryly. “Anne Preston in the White House. Heh?”

“You have pull with both big guys, huh, Rabbi?” Anne asked, laughing.

“Occasionally.”

“Well, I’ll stick to doctoring, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. How could we get along without you.” Levin thought seriously for a moment. “Especially people like Mr. Griggs. I hope you can help fix what has happened to that family.”

“Me, too, Rabbi,” Anne said, knowing there was a starting point in any project. This one would be the father.

*  *  *

The son, however, had a very different concept of healing. Healing now held the converse of its dictionary meaning for Moises Griggs. Vengeance, strangely, carried the same definition.

There had been another presentation that night by someone purveying knowledge to an assembled group, though this one was much smaller in number than that attended by the elder Griggs. Twelve, including Moises, had come to this place to receive the offering, to receive the motivation. In church it would be called the gospel. Here, as told by Darian Brown, leader of the New Africa Liberation Front, it was a clarion call to battle.

The home of the NALF was a converted liquor store that had been looted to the rafters in the uprising of ‘92, and which the former Korean owners had decided to sell off so as not to have to return to a neighborhood they saw as rejecting them. And that it had, Darian Brown professed, and rightly so. Expulsion was a hallmark of the NALF doctrine, as was compensation to the sons and daughters of slaves. Compensation in the form of land, namely that of the slave states at the time of the Civil War. It was simple in Darian Brown’s mind. You move out the white people, and move in the black. Instant nation building. New Africa in this case. A homeland for the blacks robbed of their ancestral roots across an ocean. Returning to a continent ravaged by white colonialism was not an option. A piece of this pie—America—was the minimum payment acceptable on a bill long overdue.

And that message held appeal for a number that, though small, was growing. Darian Brown knew it would grow to a large movement in time of its own accord, but that would allow time for the white man to chisel away at the hard edge of their determination. Softening them. Convincing many that peaceful measures would work. No. No longer. Darian Brown, a thirty-five-year-old product of the Los Angeles ghettos who had tested the bounds of the white man’s law, knew that time was their enemy. “Now” was their friend. This movement needed a spark to ignite it into a blaze that nothing could stop. And it needed members, committed individuals, to make that happen.

But there were different types to serve the movement. There were workers, and there were soldiers. Darian needed soldiers now more than anything. The workers could lead boycotts, and harass businesses. The soldiers would serve a more vital role. One with risk, but one that would reap great benefits for the movement.

In any group he spoke to Darian always tried to pick who fit into which class. This night had been no different, except for the fact that he saw a potential soldier in the group. Young. Clean. Not one of the foolish gangsta types who stupidly thought the NALF was an avenue to legitimize their self-destructive behavior. And this one had an intensity to his face, as if the muscles were sculpted to a mask of stone. Rigid. Determined. A possibility. One worth approaching.

“What brings you here, brother?” Darian asked the young man as he drew a cup of coffee from the bottom spout of the tall metal pot.

Moises was surprised by the question, and more surprised by who was asking it. “Uh. I saw the poster down on—”

“I didn’t ask what
directed
you here,” Darian said. “I asked what brings you here. The ‘why,’ not the ‘how.’ “

It was so obvious as an internalized reason, but how to say it. How to explain it.
Just say it
. “I think it’s time to fight.”

“Go join the N-A-A-C-P,” Darian suggested, his intonation of the letters dripping with mockery. “They fight for rights. Don’t they?”

“Not mine,” Moises answered. “Not the way I want to. Not the way that will work.”

Darian nodded acceptance of the point, his lips pouting. “Well, we may have some common ground there. What’s your name, brother?”

“Moises Griggs.”

Darian looked behind and called over the other two who sat with him in the NALF hierarchy. “Brother Moises, this is Brother Mustafa.”

“Power, Brother Moises,” Mustafa Ali said, gripping Moises’ hand in a shake reminiscent of the hold shared by arm wrestlers locked in battle. He wore a brimless hat inspired by the African
kinte
style, but with the NALF logo of two clenched black fists on its front.

Moises nodded, not knowing if he should respond with the same salutation given him.

“And this is Brother Roger,” Darian said.

“Power, Brother Moises,” Roger Sanders said, exchanging the same raised handshake. Of the three NALF men surrounding Moises, he was the tallest, fully six inches taller than Darian’s five-five frame. That modest height, and some talent, had gotten him a college scholarship to UCLA, and nothing else. He was “valuable” to the white educational establishment when his physical attributes were functioning well, but when a bum knee reduced his ability it was good-bye Roger. Enjoy working at Mickey D’s. Just like the slaves America had kidnapped from their homeland, Roger realized he was valued only as a thing that could perform. His ancestors had bailed cotton and tobacco. He had thrown a ball through a hoop. Until Darian Brown showed him that there was a path to respect. A real path.

Moises sipped from his coffee after the greetings. He could see others leaving the building in ones and twos. No one else had gotten the attention he was receiving, but neither had they been excluded. He looked to the faces of the three men, wondering why they had taken an interest in him. Wondering, but not concerned that they had. Darian Brown’s words that night had made more sense to him than anything he’d heard in his life. More sense than the forgiveness crap that had weakened his people to the point that the whites could attack them with impunity, just like they had done to Tanya.
Tanya
.

“You know, I liked what you said...Brother Darian.”