Dominion (72 page)

“This is the teaching of human philosophers, not Elyon. The soul without the body is not free to participate in the glories of the material worlds Elyon creates. That is why I must take on a body both here and in the dark world. But to take it on and shed it is very different than being one with it. That is why your ability to fully participate in the material world far exceeds mine. It is not disembodied spirits but fully human beings who will come from the east and west and sit at a table and eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Until your resurrection body, this one will be sufficient for you.”

“The food here is so varied and delicious and colorful and flavorful. It’s as if the number of flavors has multiplied as much as the number of colors. I desire the food, I savor the smell, I relish the texture, and delight in the taste.”

“Yes.” The angel looked pleased. “The great banquet feast could not be more spiritual, nor could it be more physical. The two are not at odds. You are free to enjoy what you used to need—food and work and rest and exercise. Your longings on earth were the hunger pangs that prepared you to forever enjoy the feasts and delights of heaven. Your resurrection body will allow you to fully participate in it, more than even this present body. You do not become inhuman in heaven. Rather, you become
fully
human—all that Elyon intended from the beginning that you should be.”

Ollie sat across the table from Clarence, more preoccupied than usual. “My lieutenant says there’s some pressure being put on us to back off on the investigation of your sister’s murder.”

“Pressure from where?”

“Try the chief of police.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s not pressure
from
him, it’s pressure
on
him. Your publisher could be in on it, I don’t know. Somebody with some leverage.”

“I can’t believe they’d put on pressure to close a case.”

“Believe it. Of course, you can bet they’ve done it in a way they can deny later. They probably said something like, There are dozens of other unsolved murders that deserve attention, and this one seems to have gotten a disproportionate amount. Plus, it’s creating some racial tension with the cops and the Latino community, then there’s this crazy journalist who commits this hate crime against two model citizens.’ Something like that. By the way those guys you assaulted never filed charges, and I hear they’re not even interested in suing you—bet every lawyer in town’s called them too. You’re one lucky guy.”

“Why don’t I feel lucky?”

Ollie shrugged. “I figure the fact that someone wants us to back off shows we’re getting somewhere. That we’re on to something.”

“Are you going to back off?”

“You kiddin’ me? The chief resented the pressure. The captain told the lieutenant, and he told me, ‘Don’t overdo it, but give the case whatever it deserves.’ Truth is, someone suggesting we back off on a case is like saying, ‘Sic ’em,’ to a dog. I’ve really got my sniffer goin’ now. They say a detective has to listen like a blind man and watch like a deaf man.”

“That’s profound,” Clarence said.

“Yeah.” Ollie tore a big bite out of his hot dog, leaving a smudge of mustard on his lower lip. “I’m a class act. Sometimes I even surprise myself.”

“Can I ask you something, Ollie? It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time.”

“Sure. Why not?”

“What did you think of the O. J. Simpson case?”

Ollie shot Clarence a surprised where-did-that-come-from look. He shrugged his side-of-beef shoulders. “Why do I have the feeling I’m walking into a field of Claymore mines? Okay, I’ve got two legs, I can afford to lose one. Well, since I used to work for LAPD and I’m a homicide detective, I had people ask me after the verdict, ‘Does that mean they’re going to reopen the investigation?’ I just told them, ‘You don’t reopen a case that’s been solved.’”

“You were that certain?”

“Well, after the verdict when Simpson announced he would find the person who’d done the killings, I thought, that should be easy enough. Just find the guy with the same kind of hair, same footprint, who drives a white Bronco and left a trail of blood from the crime scene that had DNA identical to yours. Let’s see, there’s maybe thirty people in the world with close enough DNA for a possible match. When you eliminate the ones living in Tibet and Madagascar or who hang their laundry on the Great Wall of China and find the one that was in L.A. the night of the murders, you’ve got him. He wants to find the killer? Hey, it’s a short walk to the bathroom mirror.”

“Ollie, if you think O. J. did it, don’t hesitate to come right out and say it. Seriously, though, what was your take on the racial issues in the trial?”

Ollie shrugged. “My belief is that people don’t care about the color of the person who kills them, any more than they care about the color of the person who keeps them from being killed. When it comes to life and death, color takes a backseat.”

“Do you think the prosecution did its job?”

“Well, yes and no. They proved their case. They made a lot of mistakes, sure. The biggest one was jury selection.”

Clarence bristled. “Letting too many blacks on the jury?”

“Not blacks per se, just certain blacks. One former Black Panther was one too many. After the verdict, the guy salutes Simpson with a Black Power fist. I think maybe the prosecutors got the message then, don’t you? They believed the best about America, that race wasn’t a big enough issue to overshadow justice. Well, they were wrong.”

“So did the verdict make you draw any conclusions about blacks?”

“Maybe. I don’t know”

“Be honest with me.”

“Okay. You want honest? Here’s three names—Mike Tyson. Marion Barry. O. J. Simpson.”

“What about them?”

“I have to draw a picture:?”

“Yeah.” Clarence knew where this was going, but he wanted to watch Ollie take each step.

“Okay. Tyson’s a convicted rapist, and you had prominent black leaders who couldn’t wait for him to get out so they could cheer him back to heavyweight champion. Barry was a convicted crack user, so he gets reelected as D.C. mayor. Simpson was a cokehead and a wife beater, at very least, even if you ignore the overwhelming evidence that he’s also a vicious murderer. And what happens? Blacks say these guys were set up. They raise them up like they were heroes instead of criminals.”

“Not all blacks.”

“No, of course not. But lots of blacks.”

“So what did it make you conclude about blacks?” Clarence braced himself, wondering why it mattered to him so much what Ollie thought.

Ollie studied Clarence’s face to see if he really wanted to hear his answer. “Maybe that
some
blacks are naïve. Or don’t care about moral responsibility. Or that
some
blacks have a blind loyalty to other blacks. Like they’ve thought so long about being victims—and yes, they really
were
victims once—they can’t make moral judgments against other blacks. They feel like traitors or something. I was called in to testify at a trial of a man who was guilty, start to finish—several witnesses, unmistakable ID, the whole nine yards. But the jury let him off. I was stunned. A black juror came up to me afterwards and he apologized to me. He said, ‘I knew he was guilty, but there’s already too many young black men behind bars; I just couldn’t put away another one.’ Ironic, since the victim was black too.”

“But you’re not saying that happens often, are you?”

“Well, how about that Jewish scholar who was stabbed to death by the black mob in New York? He actually named the guy that stabbed him before he died. But the black jury didn’t convict him. And after the acquittal, members of the jury went out partying with the defendant. It’s all documented. It happened. Or what about the conviction rates for felonies? It’s something like 80 percent nationally, but 30 percent in Detroit and less than that in D.C., where most of the accused and the juries are black. Or what about the black criminal law professor at George Washington University? The one who openly advocates jury nullification because the black community needs their men, even the criminals. Now that’s blind loyalty, don’t you think?”

“So who started the concept of blind race loyalty in American courtrooms?” Clarence asked. “White judges and juries letting off white Klansmen and winking at each other. Blacks have seen this for years. Can you understand why maybe they’d have a blind loyalty to other blacks?”

“Sure. Blacks accused of messing with whites used to be automatically convicted. It was flat out wrong. So maybe they think these black defendants are innocent and being picked on—and no doubt sometimes that’s true—and when the evidence indicates that, by all means acquit them. But in lots of cases the evidence completely refutes that. I just think there are better ways to protest the system and help minorities than freeing guilty people who are just going to go out and commit more crimes, and against who? Usually the same minorities that acquit them. I understand the frustration. No, I suppose I don’t. But that still doesn’t make it right.”

“No. It doesn’t,” Clarence said. “Black people are just reacting against the idea that being black means you’re guilty.”

“And other people are reacting against the idea that being black means you’re innocent,” Ollie said.

“The truth is, being black just means you’re human. Which means sometimes innocent, sometimes guilty. But Ollie, you have to understand the relationship with cops these black jurors bring into that courtroom. I get stopped maybe four times a year just because I’m black. You were with me coming back from the ball game, you saw it. One time I was dropping off Jake’s daughter Carly to work at a Crisis Pregnancy Center. The officer pulls me over, looks at her, and asks her if she’s all right. And then he says to me, ‘Whose kid is that?’”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him I’d kidnapped her and was going to sell her on the black market. No, I didn’t—but I wanted to. He was nice enough, once I proved I was innocent. What bothers me is just that—being presumed guilty and having to prove my innocence.”

“I’m not going to defend that kind of thing,” Ollie said. “I can tell you that when I was a uniformed, as far as I know I never pulled anyone over just because they were black. Now I’ve pulled over my share of people of every race, and most the time I saw them from behind and didn’t even know the color of their skin. I think the same thing goes for most cops. I agree the bozo who pulled you over coming home from Seattle was out of line. I’ve seen and heard enough of the Mark Fuhrman types. If the charge was racism and Fuhrman was on trial, I’d have found him guilty. It’s just that it was murder and someone
else
was on trial and I think the jury lost sight of it.”

Clarence shrugged. “Maybe they did. I just don’t think it’s that cut and dried.”

“For a couple of years I had a black partner in L.A.,” Ollie said. “Sharp guy, well read, articulate. Reminded me of you, but better looking. Could have been a corporate attorney or a CEO if he wanted to, but he wanted to be a cop. He’s a lieutenant now. He’ll make captain no problem. But the longer we spent together, the more I couldn’t believe some of the things he thought. He said crack was a white supremacist plot to murder black men—he proved this by pointing out blacks can’t afford the airplanes that bring in drugs. He told me all the liquor stores were deliberately set up by whites throughout the black community to dull black people’s thinking and raise crime so more blacks could be killed and imprisoned. When I pointed out most of the liquor stores were owned by blacks, he said it didn’t matter. He claimed government scientists created the AIDS virus in a lab in order to release it in the black community. He said AZT and other AIDS treatments were specifically designed to help white people and kill black people.”

“I’ve heard all those claims,” Clarence said, “and more.”

“I wanted to stop at a Church’s Chicken one day, and my partner refused to eat there,” Ollie said. “He claimed they put a chemical in their chicken that makes black men sterile. I was drinking a Snapple and he points to the drawing of a ship in Boston Harbor on the label, you know the Boston Tea Party, and he says that’s a slave ship. He says Snapple is made by the Ku Klux Klan and he proves it by pointing out a
K
with a circle around it, which of course means kosher. He offered no evidence for any of this, and I’ve heard Snapple and Church’s offer proof to the contrary, but he still believed it because it was all ‘well known’ in the black community. To be honest, it struck me as completely irrational—even though my partner was one of the smartest guys I knew. Maybe even smarter than me.”