Baptist DISTINCTIVE: An Adam Mykonos Mystery (The Adam Myknonos Mystries) (10 page)

“The location of tower is what gives a
radio station its signal.
 
I guess. And
anyway we had a hard time finding a plot of land big enough to put the tower
on. There was not a chance that we were ever going to get clearance to put it
on the church property.
 
Plus that
despite, the fact that it seems like you are driving up hill to Calvary you are
still way down in the valley. The higher up you build the better off you are.”
Stan stated.

Okay I thought got it. I think.

“You were up on Calvary a long time weren’t
you?” I asked.

“Bout twenty years, ever since Jessica and
I moved to the area.
 
We’d been down on
the Eastern Shoe before this.
 
She wanted
to move closer to her mom and dad.”

“So you know Longstreet pretty well.” I
stated.

Stan shook his head “No, to tell you the
truth, Brother Adam, until Pastor Lexington got there I just kind of went and
sat in the pew. Never really even paid attention that was true for a lot of us.
Longstreet and his family kind of did everything and we all just kind of followed
along. Heck Argon will tell you that as well.”

I was sure he would.

“Joshua changed that?”

“Yes Sir, he felt that everybody should
have a role, same as Pastor Luke does over at Guiding Light.
 
Real fact is that Dr. Longstreet and those
folks up there didn’t want a soul winning church, they wanted a fellowship
church and then they went and hired a soul winning pastor, made no sense.”

We had arrived at our first house, as we
rang the doorbell I thought of what Joshua had written ‘we four and no more.’ A
man in a red jogging suit answered the door.

“Hi Sir, my name is Adam and this in my
friend Stan,
 
our church is participating
in an official survey on religion in America, its eight simple questions take
about two minutes of your time, the first question is what’s your first name?”

And so it went.

Coda
Four

I believe that the greatest purpose of a church is
to win souls.

It is deep in my heart that the Great Commission to
go and make disciples of all the world applies today as much as it did when
Jesus first gave it to the eleven. A church can grow in size and money like
Calvary did before I got there, but if it is not winning souls then it is not fulfilling
its purpose.

Do I believe that all of the people we visited
during my tenure at Calvary were saved? Maybe, that is not for me to decided,
my job, your job and most importantly a church’s job is to be an ambassador for
Christ, to go out and give every person a clear chance to hear the Gospel. That
was why we opened the Christian School as an opportunity to present the Gospel
to the young. I made sure that it was designed to give away as many
scholarships as we could possibly afford in order to allow those children who
would not normally be able to attend to do so, of course that made me no
friends within the old guard. Nor did the radio station.

It may seem at first as if everyone would be happy
about a radio station. You would think that having the name of your church
associated with a high powered Christian Station, an FM one at that, would
please everybody. But they weren’t. While the station had the power to reach a
wide area of lost souls, and by joining the CFB and getting our programming
from Ryder’s company we greatly increased out presence on the air, the station
itself cost us a lot of money. Since the entire network is pledge driven,
commercial free, we were always in the red. So I did what I thought was necessary
and with the implicit permission of the deacons board, I borrowed money from
the general church funds. Each quarter when the Station came in under budget I simply
moved money over.

Understand Brother Adam I was sure of two things,
one that we were reaching souls and two that if the Lord wanted the work to
continue He would make it happen. But my confidence was not shared by Dr.
Longstreet and his people and each time I needed to reach into general funds to
propel the radio station forward they raised sterner and sterner objections
.

Chapter
Nine

An hour later we were finished and leaving
Smithsburg. Stan would drop me off at the diner and then Rita and I would take
her car to dinner and eventually home. Lighthouse Diner, along with my shop and
the Fireside restaurant are all located near the Valley Mall where Halfway Blvd
meets Wiesel Blvd. Stan and I had been in Smithsburg, we could get over to the
mall area by taking 70 to 81 or by cutting down Jefferson and though town to
Burhans and over to Wiesel. The choice was one of the Highways or through town
and like most people from the county Stan was equally comfortable with either
route.

As a Christian I do not believe in luck,
good or bad, all things are in God’s plan. And so it was God’s plan for us to
take Jefferson and then cut over to Franklin as we went through downtown,
though neither Stan nor I would be consciously aware of that choice.

We drove up Franklin past address one
hundred the county Parole Office, a place I was glad to say I was no longer
familiar with and down past the county commuter hub on our left. On the right
hand side was a small grocery store. In New York we would have called it a Bodega,
or the Conner Store, here it just was what it was. And what it was a notorious
drug spot. Few people if any stopped unless their business was with the Coke
boys who lined the parking lot.

 
From
half a block away I spotted Jim Sinclair’s big old Humvee sitting in the
lot.
 
He had just turned the ignition key
and with the window rolled down said something to a tall skinny black kid in
green hooide.
 
Sinclair zipped out three
cars in front of us and as his pick up rolled away I looked over at the face of
the young man back in the parking lot.
 
And will wonders never cease it was my
step-daughters sometime boyfriend Carlton “Catfish” Johnson.

“Stan, do me a favor swing around the block
and then pull into that store’s lot.”

Stan’s eyebrow went way up “That place?”

“If you don’t mind I need to talk to someone.”

Stan Grant has been a good friend to me
over the years and I have put him in a number of situations that I am quite
sure he was not happy about, this one just shot to the top of the list, but he did
what I asked and swung around the block and back to the parking lot.

By the time we pulled in Catfish was on the
little walk way by the front entrance to the place talking to three other kids.
He was leaning against an ice machine his hoodie pulled down half over his eyes
and his pants hanging so low that it looked like they were filled with an unspeakable
mess.
 
Stan slide the big old Lesabre
into a spot near the front.

“Can you just get out and kind of lean
against the hood and look mean?” I asked somewhat sheepishly. Stan is a head
shorter than me but he is built like a farmer, his arms are the size of tree
trunks and his short squat legs look like timbers.

He smiled “I have five kids, looking mean
is what I do most nights.”

We got out of the car; as we did the eyes
of the four kids hit us. It took Catfish a minute to recognize me.
 
He looked for a moment like he was going to
bolt and so I said as I walked towards them.

“Running just going to make you look like a
coward Carlton.
 
Be a man and stand your
ground, boy.”

His friends snickered and he reared himself
up. He was taller than me and much thinner, in fact he looked like a good meal
could kill him.

“I ain’t been near that ho since we talked
man.”

I moved in fast and high, pinning him
against the ice machine with my left arm wedged against his throat.
 
From the corner of my eye I saw Stan lean
against the hood of the car, cross his massive arms and smile at the others, he
was right he did do mean.

“Did you just call my child a ho?” I asked
softly.

He shook his head “No No”

“So now you are saying I am so old I am
going deaf?” I increased the pressure on his neck. As I had expected, because
the truth is there is no honor among thieves, his buddies were more interested
in laughing at him than helping him.

“No man, I mean I didn’t mean anything by
it.” Catfish was sweating and smelled more than a little like his namesake.

“All I meant is I ain’t been anywhere near
Roberta since you asked me to stay away from her.” He mumbled.

“I didn’t ask you Carlton I told you. And
you have been a good boy so far. “

I let up on his throat and moved back a
step from him. “Now I need you to tell me about the white guy who just drove
off in the pickup.”

“What white guy?”

“Carlton, Carlton Carlton” I said sadly
“This conversation is going to go badly if you don’t learn to co-op-er-ate.”

“Green Humvee?”

“Yep.”

“You ain’t back to being a cop are you?”

I shook my head “Now how would a con like me
be a cop again Carlton?
 
I just want to
know kid, just asking questions.”

“What if he don’t answer” shouted one of
his friends.

“Yeah, you aint the po po I don’t got to
answer you.” Catfish added feeling brave because of his buddy’s mouth.

I snapped open the door of the ice chest
and twisted Catfish’s arm around behind his back. Faster than he could blink, I
took my free hand and pushed his face into the open door and held it above the
ice.
 
“I hear freezer burns are bad
Carlton.”

I saw the kid with the mouth take half a
step towards me and then I heard Stan grunt loudly.

The kid looked at me and then over my
shoulder to Stan. He leaned back against the wall.

I pressed Catfish’s cheek towards a bag of
ice.

“Okay Okay, dude’s name is Jimmy, he buy
little now and then.”

“A little what Carlton, weed?”

“No nah, yes, sometimes weed, mostly
crank.”

“You sell crank Carlton? You never told me
or my daughter you were a meth head.”

“No man I don’t I swear it, just a little
weed, sometimes some blow. Never Meth. I swear”

“So he was here for some weed?”

“Huh huh”

“But he left a message for you to give to
his meth dealer, right?”

“No”

I pushed his face close to a frozen bag of ice;
his skin adhered to the outside of the bag. He squealed.

“I mean yes, yeah but I’m not his connect
and I just know of the kind of guy he looking for.”

“I’m confused Carlton, either the man buys
stuff here or he doesn’t, which is it.”

“Let me up and I’ll tell you. “

I eased up on Carlton’s arm and took a step
back grinning at him as I did. “Well?”

“Your man, his name’s Sinclair by the way,
use to buy off of a dude called Doughboy all the time, but he owes him his
shirt so he looking for a new connect.”

“Is that possible around here?”

Catfish shook his head “Sure all these Hill
Billy Bikers got a run of the stuff.”

“No central control?”

“The Mexicans?” He said as a question not a
statement.

I patted him on the shoulder “So did you
give him a name?”

Catfish looked at his buddies, to tell me
the name may mark him as a snitch, not to tell me the name was going to get him
a beating, either way he was going to lose face.

“I’m not the PO PO Carlton; I’m not looking
to jam the man up.”

He shook his head. “The only name I could
give him was one he already had, and I think he burnt that line like he did Doughboy.”

I rolled my hands in a circular motion to
encourage him.

“One of yours.”

I pondered, a Christian, a cop, or….

“An Albanian?”

“Some foreigner, dude lives over on the
West End, Prihor, they call him the bird.”

Of course they did Prihor was Romanian, not
Albanian for robin.
 
Dennis Prihor and
his wife actually attended Calvary; I had a hard time picturing them as Meth
dealers.
 
I pushed Catfish back away from
me a little then I straighten the edge of his hoodie

“See kid that was not all that bad. I may
be back, or I may not. Meantime keep away from Roberta.”

He didn’t say a word as I walked back to
the car. I nodded at Stan and we got in. We were about to pull out when Stan
abruptly stopped the car. He got out and walked over to Catfish and his
friends, handing each one of them a track from our church.

 
“You
all come on down to see us when you can.” He said to them with a big farmers
grin.

He got back in the car and started it up.
“Never pass up and opportunity to present the gospel Brother Adam.” Stan said
to me as we pulled off.