Little Girl Lost 6: The Return of Johnnie Wise (29 page)

“I’d say so, yes. The man had paid his bill and left the restaurant. A few minutes later, he came back in with her. Now what you’ve gotta get, sir, is that this establishment doesn’t serve Negroes, at least not inside the restaurant, but he said something to the owner, and the owner let her stay.”

“What’s his name?”

“Paul Masterson. He’s a traveling preacher. He’s here for some sort of revival, but earlier this morning, he had breakfast at Lucille’s, where Miss Wise works. They talked off and on while he was there, and then he picked her up at 1:30 this afternoon. They came straight to this restaurant, sir.”

“He’s from Houston, sir. He preaches to the Negroes in this area a couple times a year. He’s a radical, sir. The white churches won’t have him preach in their churches because he preaches equality and that all races are of one blood. I’m surprised there hasn’t been an attempt on his life for preaching that kind of message. Even if it’s true, white people don’t want to hear that. If people started believing that, it would turn the country upside down.”

“The way that he looks at her for starters, sir. Then, there’s the fact that he took on three tough-looking bikers on her behalf and wiped the floor with them. The leader’s going to need a lot of dental work, or his smile will never be the same. The preacher is not a man to be messed with. When they came to and tried to leave, he wouldn’t allow them to until they apologized to her and she accepted. If you wanna know the truth, sir, I think Miss Wise was so flattered that the preacher did a number on the bikers that she wanted to sleep with him. That’s just a guess though, sir. Also, if I’m right, and if the preacher turns out to be a charlatan, they’ll probably sleep together.”

“What makes you say that?”

“They’re both staying at the Clementine Hotel, sir. All she has to do is let him in one night for any number of reasons. After that, nature will inevitably take its course.”

“I want you and your people on the first plane to Houston. Find out all there is to know about Paul Masterson and bring it back to me before her car is fixed. It shouldn’t take you more than two weeks, right?”

“No need. She’s not going anywhere any time soon. If you take all of your people, you’ll be able to cover more ground in Houston quickly. Besides, what if you find out that there’s information to be had in another city or another state? What then? You’ll have to send someone there, but I don’t want the Houston leads abandoned or delayed because you found a new lead. And I don’t want you to have to call Jackson and pull someone off her and have them fly somewhere when they could leave from Houston immediately. Again, Johnnie isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but I want that information on Masterson as soon as possible. You got that, Hatcher?”

Chapter 54

“
Forgive me, but can I be honest with you?”

P
aul Masterson looked at his watch. It was almost 2:30. He knew that he needed to get back to his hotel room to study and pray before he delivered his message, but he was too interested in the young woman that he had brought to the restaurant. Her conversation earlier that day intrigued him. He could tell that she had keen intellect. He wanted to know more. Given the women that she had mentioned in Lucille’s that morning, he sensed that she was what the church called a believer. Most vacation Bible school students couldn’t remember a simple verse like “Jesus wept.” While the average Christian might remember the verse, truth be told, most couldn’t tell you what book it was in, which underscores why he was so impressed that she knew all the names of the women mentioned in Christ’s genealogy. The average Christian would probably name Mary, if asked, forgetting that biblical genealogies rarely mentioned women. Here, four had been mentioned, and she remembered all four of them and their order of appearance. “So, tell me, Johnnie, why did you mention Tamar, Rehab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite?”

He leaned forward, wanting to know more, wanting to delve deeper into her heart, thinking there was an opportunity to convert her. “So, then you have some religious background?”

“I do.”

“Do you mind telling me about your religious affiliation?”

“No, I don’t mind. I used to go to a holiness church back in New Orleans. I loved going there. I sung in the choir, and I played piano. I was quite popular. People from other churches used to come from all over the place to hear me sing.”

“Do you still go to church?”

She looked away, and then closed her eyes as she fought off the tears as a reservoir of emotions filled her heart. The question seemed simple enough, but it somehow broke through the wall of resistance that she had put up a long time ago. She could see it all now, image after image, of what her mother made her do. His hands were cold, and he had no regard for her displeasure with it all. She was bought and paid for, and so he could take her any way he wanted to. It wasn’t about her anyway. It was about him, what he wanted, what he needed, his fulfillment, his pleasure.

She felt it all again, like it was happening at that very moment, the sting of pain, the blood that covered her and the white sheets when Earl Shamus recklessly entered her even though she had reminded him that he was a married man, forcing her to participate in his adultery. What made it worse was that it was her first sexual encounter, and she had heard too many sermons on adultery, fornication, and homosexuality to justify any of it. The worst blow of all had to be the sting of her mother’s harsh words after she had been plundered, ripped open like a can of soup and devoured by a grown man long before she was ready.

The woman who bore her had basically told her that her purity was of no value, while at the same time making money off that very purity that she had deemed worthless. In fact, it was her purity that made it possible to charge Shamus a thousand dollars for the privilege of deflowering her. Worse than that, her mother thought that she had made a great bargain because Shamus only offered five hundred and she negotiated another five hundred, telling her daughter, “I didn’t let you go cheap,” as if that was to somehow make up for the loss of her purity. Never mind that her mother didn’t give her any of the money.

Masterson remained quiet. He remembered that she had said that there was more ugly truth that she hadn’t told him. He was ready to hear it now because whatever she was holding inside needed to come out. He knew that even though everyone has a past, secrets are hard to live with. He understood that people had to deny truth on a daily basis just to get through the day. And at some point, the hidden secrets of the heart had to surface, and they had to be dealt with in a constructive manner. So, he quietly watched her, waiting for her to open up and share her hidden truth. And when she did, he could lead her to his God.

Chapter 55

“
Why haven’t you done anything about this, Paul?”

J
ohnnie pressed her lips together and ran her tongue across them as what Paul Masterson might possibly say shaped her thoughts. She picked up a napkin and dabbed the corners of her eyes. She took a couple deep breaths and tried to compose herself, as her eyes took in all of him, assiduously contemplating their discussion and how it had progressed so far. She had heard a number of people ask if they could be honest with her and others in the past. It was her experience that asking if one could be honest was a not so subtle prelude to unpleasantness. It was the unmistakable preamble to a verbal exchange, in which most people did not want to participate. And since Masterson was a minister of the Gospel, it wasn’t difficult to figure out where the conversation was going. He wanted to talk about Jesus and spiritual matters, she knew, which meant he was about to start acting like the preacher he
said
that he was. She wasn’t intimidated by his desire to discuss spiritual things. In fact, she welcomed the divergent direction. It had been a long time coming. After all she had been through, after everything that had happened to her, and after the choices she made as a result, she felt like the female version of the Prodigal Son.

When they were lounging at the pool of the Savoy Hotel, sipping cool drinks on a blistering day, she had been given sound advice from Marguerite when she explained that she could be an evangelist if that’s what she wanted to be. She quickly rejected the advice in favor of bilking Earl Shamus out of more of his wife’s money. She had been given sound wisdom when her best friend, Sadie Lane, told her she could be anything she wanted to be. She also rejected that advice since she had acquired money and a beautiful home by giving sexual favors to a man she couldn’t stand. But she had lost it all, and now, she was ready to hear whatever sound advice Masterson was about to give her. This time, she would listen. This time, she would accept whatever wisdom he had to offer. She nodded several times before saying, “Sure, Paul. Let’s have it. Be honest with me.”

He hesitated for a few seconds, looking into her exotic, brown eyes, captivated by them, seeing them as finishing touches of a masterpiece constructed, shaped, and painted by the finger of God Himself. “Perhaps a question is in order here,” he said and paused.

“Go on,” she said, encouraging him, believing that he was afraid of offending her. But she was far from being offended. Having hit rock bottom, she was more than ready to hear whatever he had to say. “I’m listening.”

“Um, that’s
two
questions, not one.” She offered a friendly smile so that he would know she was playing with him. “Of the two questions, I chose life. I chose life because God can’t be unfair, can He, Paul?”

“No, He can’t, but we can
think
He’s unfair because of the horrible things that people do to us. In fact, most of the people I know think God is unfair, whether it’s because their neighbor has something they don’t or if they think they should have gotten something they didn’t get. And then, there are the children of molestation. Or more specific, the children of rape. Children like you, Johnnie . . . people who have been mistreated by calculating adults who should have known better. And indeed did know better, but still raped an innocent child.” He paused for a beat. “I’ll let you in on a secret that will one day get out.”

She leaned in as if what he was about to say was a terrible thing that should never be uttered in a public place and whispered, “What?”

He leaned in, too, and responded in like kind. “There are men of the cloth who are raping boys in the Catholic Church and nothing’s being done about it.”

She pulled back like she saw a punch coming at her. She inhaled deeply and exhaled, “What?”

He looked over Johnnie’s shoulder and checked his periphery, making sure what he had to say was between them and no one else. “Yes. It’s true. And not only is there nothing being done about it, it’s actually being swept under the rug.”

Floored by the revelation, she said, “You’re serious, Paul?”

“I am,” he said, still looking around, looking to see who might be paying attention to their conversation. “Pretty soon there’s going to be an enormous bump in that very rug that the clergy, the Vatican, and the world for that matter won’t be able to ignore. Don’t get me wrong, Johnnie, we all have our faults. I have plenty of them, too, and we can all fall to temptation and sin . . . every last one of us, but to look the other way only perpetuates it. And if something isn’t done, and I mean soon, the Catholic Church will be completely infiltrated by homosexuality and it might even invade the Vatican itself.