Dominion (102 page)

“How’d you get Gracie to OD? The truth.” Clarence laid the point of the coil on the hinge of Shadow’s arm.

“Gave her some pure stuff, uncut. She took it and just ghosted right out of this world.”

“Who put the heroin in my coffee?”

“White? In yo’ coffee? Don’t know whatchu talkin’ about.” Clarence picked up the Glock and squeezed the handle. The red light shone in Shadow’s eyes. “Tellin’ the truth, man,” Shadow said. “Don’t know nothin’ about no white or coffee.”

“Did you pay Gracie to say I sexually abused her?” Silence. “Answer me!”

“No,” he whispered, as if he hoped the machine might not hear him. A one-inch arc leapt to his arm. The electricity stopped for a moment, then arced again. It happened a third time. Shadow’s arm showed a big strawberry splotch. Terrified, he twitched and wrestled with the rope that held down his arms. He looked up frantically at Clarence, staring into a ruby red light.

“Too bad,” Clarence said. “Now I pull the trigger.”

“No, wait! Don’t do it, man. You can’t shoot me!” Shadow saw Clarence’s finger turning white on the trigger. “Okay, I gave the money to Gracie. But GC sent me to do it!”

“But whose idea was it to set me up? This is your last chance.”

“Okay. Chill. Be cool, man. It was that guy from the councilman’s office. The little guy.”

“Gray?”

“Yeah, Gray, that’s the dude. That be him.”

“How do you know Gray?”

“Met him and the councilman at the gang summit last year. You know, where the bigwigs, they bring in gang leaders for a powwow.”

“Has Gray ever hired GC or you before?”

“No. Wait. Yes. Couple of times.

“What did you do for him?”

“Passed out stuff.”

“And?”

“Just some bitty favors, that’s all. We did a few things for him, gave him some names, talked to some people. He put in a word for us with the DA on some charges. That’s it.”

“What would your gang think if they knew you and GC were gettin’ paid by the Man?” Clarence asked. “Okay. Here we go. Did you shoot up my sister’s house?”

“No way, man, no way.” No arc. No shock.

“Now think carefully before you answer. Did you or GC meet with some guys from out of town that did the hit?”

Shadow looked down. “GC met a couple of dudes at the Taco Bell. Gave them an address. They got it wrong. Wasn’t his fault. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it— straight up, man. Don’t even know who sent GC down there. He wouldn’t tell me. Same guy, Gray, I guess, but don’t know for sure.”

Clarence took a tape recorder out of his pocket. “If I decide not to kill you, Davey, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take this tape recording and put it in a safe deposit box with a written record of what you’ve confessed to—the murders, the setup, the payoff, everything. And if anybody comes after me or my son or wife or nephew or anyone I know, then there’s a detective named Manny who’s going to get this. And no lawyer’s going to save you. The cops will nail you for sure. So pass the word. It better be safe for my family or you’re history Got it?”

Shadow nodded. Clarence took off the surgical tubing and the blood pressure unit, then untied him roughly.

Neither said a word on the drive back to North Portland. Clarence pulled up across the street from Shadow’s house. “Get out of my sight. Remember, anybody in my family gets hurt, you pay.” He pushed Shadow out the passenger door, not bothering to return his Sig Sauer or his knife.

“Now, chillens, I been hearin’ some talk I want to set straight. I wants you to understand not all white folks is bad. There’s plenty of good ones, and don’t let nobody tell you different.” Obadiah spoke to his grandchildren, gathered at his request in the living room late in the afternoon. Ty sat there under protest, but Granddaddy had insisted.

“I was thirty-five when I joined the army because I wanted to serve my country. There was a private named Mike Button, from Texas. One day we was doin’ field maneuvers in ninety degree heat. So we takes a break. I’s standin’ under a shade tree, and ol’ Mike, he comes up to me and says, ‘Forgot my canteen. Mind if I have a drink, Obadiah?’ I reached to get my cup to pour him some water, but Mike just slaps the cup away and grabs the canteen. Then he pulls it to his mouth and takes a long draw. Well, them days whites didn’t never drink from the same bottle as blacks. I knowed it weren’t no accident. Mike did it on purpose. That was the beginning of a fast friendship. We wrote each other letters every Christmas until five years ago when he died. I still writes to his widow, but my hand’s so shaky don’t know if she can read it. One day I’m gonna see ol’ Mike again because he loved Jesus and so do I. My black hand’s gonna grip his white hand. And it’s gonna be a strong grip then. All hell won’t be able to break apart those two hands.” His right eye grew heavy. He reached to it, and a big tear cascaded down his cheek.

“Tell us about the Depression, Gramps,” Jonah said.

“Well, now, them were some days, I’m tellin’ you. My brother Elijah, he traveled with me then. We couldn’t find no work in Mississippi, so we took to ridin’ the rails. We’d get off town to town, search for work all day. Most nights we was outside. We’d find some newspaper, lay it over us, and put our arms around each other jus’ to keep from freezin’. Loved all my brothers and sisters, but none like ol’ Elijah. And I think he’d say the same about me. One time me and ‘Lijah, we was in Detroit. We was kickin’ ourselves for ridin’ the rail so far north, it was so cold. We was huddlin’ up for the night in a back alley, and in the dark I hears someone amoanin’. So Elijah and me, we moves over to this poor man, stiff as a board. I gets on one side and Elijah on t’other, and we puts our arms around him.

“He was scared at first. Can’t blame him.” Obadiah laughed. “We got out of him his name was Freddy. That’s the only thing he said all night. Frrrrrrrrreddy.”’ He laughed again. “Cold as ice. But after thirty minutes of his face buried in my ol’ sweater, his mouth thawed out. We gived him our last piece of bread. He needed it more than we did. ’Lijah was singin’ the ol’ spirituals, and another hour or so Freddy got warm enough and Elijah’s lullabies put him to sleep. No one could sing like Elijah. Well, come just after dawn, Elijah sings ‘Amazin’ Grace.’ He wakes ol’ Freddy up. Of course, by then we knew Freddy was white. You should’ve seen the look on his face when he realized he’d spent the night as lunch meat in a Negro sandwich!”

“What did he do then, Grandpa?” Jonah asked.

“Well, he stayed right there. And we got to talkin’. When it warmed up to about forty degrees, we got up and looked for work together. Became good friends. And for almost a week ol’ Freddy spent the nights in that same Negro sandwich!

“Frrrrrrrreddy,” Obadiah said again, laughing so hard it took his breath away. “I hasn’t told you the best part, chillens. Freddy asked us why we cared enough to keep him warm. Me and ’Lijah, we told him the reason. It was Jesus. We went our separate ways after that week, ’cause Detroit was home for him, but if we was goin’ to sleep outside, me and ’Lijah preferred Mississippi!”

“What happened to Freddy?” Keisha asked.

“Don’t rightly know. Never saw him again. But one thing we learned. There’s two times when color don’t matter. One’s when you’re cold and hungry. The other’s when you know Jesus.”

Dani looked through the portal, watching Freddy sandwiched between her daddy and Uncle Elijah. She looked as the three men said their good-byes, then was startled to see Freddy suddenly disappear. Simultaneously, in the same spot, she saw an angel appear in the invisible realm.

A look of shocked realization swept across Dani’s face. “Freddy was an angel?”

“Yes,” Torel said. “Some of us Elyon sends as guardians. Others he sends to test his children and to teach them lessons. Adam’s race is unaware of who these are. You encountered such messengers yourself, dozens of them. Freddy tested your father and uncle, gave them an opportunity to care for a needy person in the name of Christ. They passed the test. Great reward awaits them.”

“What kind of reward?”

“That is not mine to say. But it will involve the angel himself, the one they helped. And it will involve the Master, who takes personally the help given in his name to the needy, as if it were done directly to him. Those who help the needy he repays lavishly, beyond the dreams of men.”

“You said I met such messengers myself. Did I pass the tests?”

“Sometimes you did, sometimes you did not. For those you did not, of course, you will receive no reward, nor will you have opportunity to earn that reward now, for earth was the land of opportunity. But you will be taken back, shown those opportunities again, so you can learn here the lessons you failed to learn then and there. As for those tests you passed, you will learn of these too. You will meet those messengers you helped. From their hands and Elyon’s you will experience reward richer than I could describe. I will say no more about it now.”

Clarence came in and sat next to the hospital bed. “How you feeling?” he asked.

“For a guy with a couple of broken ribs, I’m feeling pretty good. The doctor says it’s blunt trauma. The force of the impact came through the body armor even though the bullets didn’t. By the way.” Ollie said, “thanks for bleeding all over my suit.”

“With those bullet holes, your suit was a goner anyway,” Clarence said. “I might just buy you a better one at the Goodwill. I thought you were history, Ollie. I really did. I thought it was your blood, not mine. I couldn’t even feel a pulse. I guess my fingers were too numb from the cold. I never knew you wore body armor till Manny told me in the car. You could have saved me a lot of sweat if you’d told me.”

“I usually don’t wear it, but when we go into any potentially dangerous situation, it’s policy for detectives to put on the armor. It’s pretty lightweight these days. Saved my skin, that’s for sure. Anyway, the lieutenant tells me by the time SERT got to the crack house, the homeboys had scattered out the back. We can’t even prove Shadow was there. No positive ID on anybody. Can you believe it? They shoot up my car, open fire on me, ruin my shirt, wing you, and they get away with it. Shadow’s out there laughin’ at us right now.”

“I don’t think he’s laughing, Ollie.”

“Why’s that?”

Clarence told him the story of the phony lie detector test. Ollie listened intently, raising his eyebrows and trying not to smile.