Dominion (59 page)

At first she thought it was a new song, so original and penetrating. Then she realized she knew the song. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” The singer—of course, he was the writer of the song. The old slave-trader, repentant of racism and oppression and injustice, eternally cleansed. “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

He continued to sing, many in the crowd joining him, others just listening to his voice, contemplating the drama of redemption embodied in the man. All heaven joined together as he sang, “When we’ve been here ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’d first begun.”

Many of Michael’s legions seemed to appear from nowhere—some striding forward, some coming down from above, some appearing to come from beyond the far side of the throne. There were untold thousands of them, ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled Elyon’s throne and sang in a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

Suddenly an explosion of sound pierced the air from behind and around Dani. Everyone sang now with an impetus that pushed her forward toward the throne. Surrounded in sound, resonating as if she were a tuning fork, she both absorbed the sound and produced it. She felt like a leaf swept along in a raging river, a river that both came from and led to Elyon Most High.

The worshippers sang many songs. Now a little girl walked across the platform and began to sing. She looked so beautiful, she reminded Dani of…Felicia! She had written her song for Elyon’s Son, and he wished all heaven to hear it. The song was so beautiful, Felicia’s voice so wondrous. Dani swelled with the right kind of pride, realizing this was her girl, yet even on earth she had never owned her. People could own things, but only Elyon could own people. Felicia was and would always be Dani’s treasure, for she had invested so much in her. But the girl was Elyon’s treasure first and last and above all. Dani looked to the throne so far away and yet so very close and met the eyes of the Carpenter. For an instant, they shared an intimate joy over this little girl.

Dani could barely hear the million singing angels up front, for the voice of the multitudes overwhelmed them. The angels had at first seemed the largest choir ever assembled but now proved to be only the small worship ensemble that led the true choir of untold millions, now lost to themselves, lost to all but Elyon, singing at full voice, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and dominion, for ever and ever!”

“Hey, Carp,” Clarence said, standing over her desk. “I’m doing a column on bias in photojournalism. It’s your fault. You’re the one that opened my eyes. I’ll leave you out if you want me to. Or if I quote you I’ll let you see it before it goes to print. Will you talk to me?”

“As long as I can look it over before anyone else sees it, including Winston. Okay?”

“It’s a deal. You know what I’m looking for. Talk to me about photojournalism.” Clarence had yellow pad and pen in hand.

“Well, it’s a world of its own, and people don’t understand it. They understand misquotes, at least once they’re the victims. But they don’t understand photojournalism enough to realize what it’s about. Of course, we’ve been altering still photos for decades. Like you saw with the police officer, we do cropping all the time, selecting what the viewer or reader will see and what he won’t.”

“That’s not new to me, but when I saw what it did to Ollie, I admit it threw me.”

“Well, that’s just the beginning. Welcome to the computer age. We can load in a picture and do pretty much whatever we want to with it. It’s like wire service stories. You take what you want and leave out what you don’t want, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Sunny day but we want the picture to feel overcast? No problem. We can shade it. With the new technology, all the computer imaging and enhancing, we can edit reality more effectively than you can with words. Years ago
National Geographic
had a shot of the Great Pyramids outside Cairo. They couldn’t all fit in the same picture and still be as big as the editors wanted them, so they just cut out the space in between. Squeezed them together. They figured, hey, it was just editing out sand.”

“They really did that?”

“Sure. And I know photographers who defended it. It served the purpose and it looked great. But it wasn’t real. I mean, it took 200,000 workers and what, over a hundred years, for the Egyptians to build those pyramids. But the editors at
National Geographic
moved them without breaking a sweat.”

“How’d they do it?”

Carp pointed to the computer screen next to her. “This graphics software gives us the ability to manipulate images. Remove or add them, separate images or combine them. With computers you can do it seamlessly The final product looks as good as the original. No, it looks
better.
Used to be if reality didn’t look good enough, tough luck. Now you can edit reality.” Carp reached in her top desk drawer and pulled out a photograph of a desk.

“Here’s one I use in my photojournalism class over at Portland Community College. You’ve got a photo of this classy looking oak desk, and there’s this can of Coke that ruins the ambiance.” She pointed to the can in the picture. “The old question used to be, Is it okay for the photographer to
move
the can before she shoots in order to set up a better picture? Now the question is, Is it okay if she removes the can
after
she takes the picture?”

Carp showed Clarence a second photo, identical, but with no Coke can. “That’s what was done with this photo. When it got published there wasn’t anything to indicate the alteration. I ask my students, ‘Who thinks this is wrong?’ Almost none of them raise their hands. So I ask them, ‘Where do you stop? What’s the difference between removing a can and adding it?’ I could put all kinds of things on this desk. It’s called reverse cropping, and it’s done more than you think. Thing is, unless you’ve got some incredibly observant eyewitness that was there when the photo was taken, nobody will notice.”

“Amazing.”

“I’ve got photo CDs with tens of thousands of pictures. I could put the crown jewels or a
Playboy
magazine on that desk. I could incriminate someone or I could exonerate them by what I add or subtract. Say you’ve got somebody you like, and he’s wearing a T-shirt with an offensive slogan or his gut is hanging out. Used to be you had to use it as is or crop around it. But now you can just remove it.”

“The slogan or the gut?”

“Either. Both. In fact, you could change the slogan to something more positive or just wipe it off the T-shirt. You could put six-pack abs in place of the soft gut. Whatever you want. It’s like taking steroids in body-building or football. As long as you don’t get caught, you’re a hero.”

“Have you ever done it, Carp?”

“Take steroids?”

“No. Manipulate photos.”

“Off the record? Yeah, I’ve done it, just a few times. I’m not proud of it. I console myself with the fact that I didn’t hurt anybody and that I feel guilty. Means I still have a conscience, I guess.”

The radio scanner on Carp’s desk suddenly settled on a channel where an excited voice was saying there was a fire at the Heathman Hotel, with people trapped inside. Carp grabbed her camera and car keys.

“Speaking of ethics, this is where I try to discipline myself to hope they all get out okay and I don’t end up with an award-winning picture of somebody burning or jumping. Later, Clarence.”

“Thanks for your time, Carp. Don’t get too close to the fire.”

Clarence drove into Taco Bell at 5:05 and waited impatiently for Ollie. The detective pulled in right at 5:15. He hopped out and beckoned Clarence to join him in his car.

“We’ll leave your car here,” Ollie called, “so you can’t welsh on the Burrito Supreme.”

“What’s going on, Ollie?” Clarence asked as he got in the passenger seat.

“You’ll find out.” Ollie drove slowly down Jack Street and pulled over at Tenth. He put the car in park.

“Okay,” Ollie said. “Class is in session. Look at the street sign. Tell me what you see.”

“It says ‘Jack.’ How’m I doing, Sherlock?”

“So far so good, Watson. Tell me more.”

“Well, looks like some tagger’s messed with the
k
at the end of ‘Jack.’ Put a
c
over it.”

“Right,” Ollie said. “And who would make that kind of change?”

“A Crip. Bloods like the
ck
, you said; Crips hate it. Stands for Crip killer, right? So some Crip just put a
c
over the
k.”
He looked at Ollie. “Do I pass the test?”

“With flying colors.” Ollie U-turned back toward MLK and headed south. He drove down to Jackson, turned left, and pulled over immediately.

“Okay,” Ollie said, “get out of the car and tell me this street name.”

Clarence opened the door, stood on the sidewalk, and looked over the car top at the sign across the street. “Jackson. Ollie, this is my street. The sign just says Jackson. No graffiti. Nothing. Am I missing something?”

“Nope. But suppose just for a minute that some Crip decided he didn’t like the ck in Jackson. What would he do?”

“Same thing as the other, I guess. Turn the
k
into another
c
?”

Ollie reached under the front seat and pulled out a green street sign with white letters. He held it up on top of his car for Clarence to inspect.

“Where’d you get that sign?”

“Never mind,” Ollie said. “Tell me what you see.”

“Well, it says Jack, except somebody painted a white
c
over the
k.
It was a neat job. Let me see it.” Ollie handed him the sign. “Yeah, okay, they used a green paint on the edges of the
k
so the white
c
covers it nicely. That green paint’s a perfect match for the sign. And there’s some letters on the end, covered with green:
s-o-n.
Okay, I got it, this was a Jackson Street sign.”

Ollie took the sign back, walked across the street, and held it up to the street sign post, just below the Jackson sign. “What does it look like?”

“Jacc. Okay, it looks like Jack Street.”

Ollie bounced back into the car, put it in drive, and pulled off, Clarence barely getting in on time.

“Ollie, wait a minute, are you saying…?” Clarence didn’t finish the sentence. Ollie continued to drive three blocks, past Dani’s house, and turned north. When he got up to Jack Street he turned left, back toward MLK. Then he pulled over and this time shut off the engine.

“See this house? How many blocks down from MLK?”

“Three and a half, I guess. So?”

“Look at the house numbers.”

“Nine twenty. Wait. That’s Dani’s house number.”

“What color is the house?”

“Blue. Same as Dani’s.” Clarence hesitated. “Ollie, are you saying this house was the one the killers meant to hit?”

“Can’t be sure yet. But I’d lay big bucks on it.”