Dominion (90 page)

“I’m puzzled,” Dani said to Zeke. “As I’ve studied you on earth, despite all that was done to you, I saw no bitterness. How could you forgive people so easily?”

“‘Member the Carpenter’s parable of that man forgiven a huge debt by his king? Then the man refused to forgive someone who owed him far less.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, great-granddaughter, I reckon that’s one of those passages you should go back and study. You haven’t learned its full meaning yet. The Carpenter was sayin’ our debt to God is infinitely beyond our capacity to repay. He was also sayin’ our debt to God is infinitely greater than any person’s debt to us, no matter how cruel or unjust they’ve been. Compared to our sins against God, anybody’s sins against us is small potatoes. He was also sayin’ that when we experience God’s forgiveness, it changes us into forgiving people. Jesus said, if you’re forgiven you
must
forgive others. Once you understand our sins against him and his forgiveness for us, how can you
not
forgive others?”

“I guess I sometimes saw the worst in people,” Dani said.

“There’s plenty of bad to see, that’s for sure,” Zeke said. “The answer isn’t to pretend people don’t do bad things, but to realize God sees us at our worst and still loves us. And by his grace he helps us to see others at their worst but still love them. No sinner is beyond his reach, chile. Bitterness, that’s just a self-imposed prison. It’s a terrible cost to yourself and your loved ones. It’s a cost I wasn’t willin’ to pay. Bitterness never relieves suffering, it only causes it. I used to pray for the overseers and masters who beat me. I knew they wasn’t beyond God’s grace because I wasn’t. One of the slaves, ol’ Elmo, he used to say the massas didn’t deserve forgiveness. I said,” Course they doesn’t deserve forgiveness, Elmo. No man does. If you deserved forgiveness, you wouldn’t need it.’

“Elmo says to me, ‘I just wants what I deserves. I wants what’s comin’ to me.’ I said, ‘Don’t go sayin’ that, Elmo. If we gets what we deserves, then all we gets is hell.’”

“I knew that,” Dani said, “but somehow I never experienced it at the depth you did.”

“I remembers one ol’ hound named Rosco. You gived Rosco a bone and he’d bury it. Then he’d always dig it back up just to be sure it was still there. When he was still a pup, every day he made his rounds. He’d go to twenty or thirty places, bury his bones, but he’d never let them lie. He’d just keep diggin’ ’em up again. That’s how peoples can be. They maybe bury sins a little bit, say they’ve forgiven, but they never forget where them ol’ bones is. They always go back, dig ’em up again and again. So they can still wallows in their pity and comforts theirselves by thinkin’ how they’s victims. As if that made ’em righteous. Sad thing is, by pushin’ away God’s grace to others, they push away his grace to them.”

“Detective Chandler? This is Sheila.” Ollie pressed the speakerphone.

“Did Mr. Harper call?” Ollie asked.

“He sure did. Just like you said. He sounded really upset.”

“Good. Who did he ask for?”

“No one,” Sheila said.

“No one?”

“He said somebody was sending him a bunch of nonsense faxes and I should tell whoever it is to knock it off. Mr. Harper was moving out of here just when I got hired, so I didn’t know him well, but I sure never heard him this upset. He asked me who was sending the faxes. I said I really wasn’t sure.”

“Perfect, Sheila. You’ve done your job. Treat yourself to a Dove Bar or something.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” She laughed. “I’m on a diet.”

“Okay. I’ll have one for you. Remember, this is police business. Confidential. Can’t tell Norcoast or Gray or anybody, right?”

“Right. One other thing—before he got off, Mr. Harper asked if Jean, our office manager, was back from a conference in L.A. He didn’t say he wanted to talk to her, but if she’d been here I think he would have. I’m not even sure how he knew she was in L.A.”

“Jean, huh? Are they friends?”

“They worked together closely when Mr. Harper was in our office. That’s all I know.”

“Okay, thanks again, Sheila.” Ollie hung up the phone and smiled at Clarence. “Now we know for sure the original was faxed from Norcoast’s office to Harper’s, because that’s where he assumed it came from today. I’m disappointed he called the main number rather than Gray’s or Norcoast’s private line. I was hoping he’d show us exactly which of them sent the fax. Granted, you got it off Norcoast’s computer, so it was probably him, but probably isn’t good enough. Anyway, at least we know we’re on the right track.”

“That fax doesn’t say what the ‘job’ is,” Clarence said. “But Harper had to know
exactly
what it meant, right?”

“Right. And that had to be stated in some previous voice conversation, probably one of those phone calls from Norcoast’s office. No one would be stupid enough to put any specifics in print. We can’t prove exactly what was said, when, and by whom. We certainly can’t prove someone told Harper to send up some hit men to 920 North Jack Street. But this,” he held up the paper he’d faxed to Harper, “is our cash cow. We’ve got to milk it for all it’s worth.”

Clarence sat down in Jess Foley’s office, along with Winston. “Look, Clarence,” Jess said, “This morning I met with Raylon and one of the
Trib
attorneys. As you can imagine, we’re in a very difficult position with the charges brought against you. We want to make a proposal.”

“Let me guess, a leave of absence? Or are you asking for my resignation?”

“If you resign, that’s your choice,” Jess said. “It might be best for you and your family, I don’t know. Personally, I hope you don’t. But meanwhile we’re offering you a paid leave of absence. Winston and I have discussed it, and we can fill your slot with other columns until this thing gets resolved. What do you think?”

Clarence looked at Winston, who didn’t return his gaze. Then he looked at Jess, who was clearly less comfortable doing this than editing a newspaper.

“What I think is that neither Raylon nor you nor any of the
Trib
attorneys has even asked me if I did anything wrong. Maybe it’s because you’re assuming I did. Well, I didn’t. And maybe what matters to you isn’t whether I’m guilty, but just that I’ve been accused. Well, I’m innocent, and if it makes the
Trib
look bad because somebody lied about me, too bad for the
Trib.
To walk away would be to say I was guilty. It would be just what whoever set me up wants. I’m staying, and I’m going to keep writing. Of course, you can fire me. But if you do, tell Raylon when I prove I’m innocent, I’m going to sue the
Trib.
Maybe even a class-action suit—discriminating against a minority employee. Yeah. Tell Raylon to chew on that for a while.”

Clarence marched straight to his desk, choosing the column subject he considered most likely to infuriate Raylon Berkley and Reggie Norcoast. He pulled out a file full of notes and typed emphatically, pounding his fingers on the keys.

The Center for New Black Leadership’s board members—including Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury, and Phyllis Berry Myers—say the time has come for emphasizing black self-reliance, economic power, and social stability. They maintain that calling for personal responsibility must no longer be caricatured as “blaming the victim.” They say, “We will promote and celebrate black achievement as evidence of our humanity, rather than lament and advertise black failure as evidence of our victimization.”

The Center is part of a ground-swell movement most readers haven’t heard of, since it receives so little media attention (due to journalists’ annoying habit of considering liberal extremists the only “real blacks”).

But clearly, a new day is dawning among black Americans. I find it both refreshing and hopeful. I call upon the
Trib
and other media to give this important new movement the coverage it deserves. I for one will be featuring the efforts of some of the leaders in this movement in future columns.

“Ready for this?” Ollie asked Clarence. “I think we’ve traced bank account records from Norcoast’s office to Harper’s.”

“You can do that?”

“It wasn’t official,” Ollie said. “I was just talking about the situation with Ray in Sacramento, and bang, next thing I know I get this fax.” He waved the paper. “Some interesting transactions. Like, thirty-five-thousand dollars wired from Norcoast’s campaign account to Matthew Harper’s personal account. The date was September 2.”

“Same day as the murder.”

“I might have expected it the next day, after the job was done, but apparently they jumped the gun to make sure he was ready with the cash when our perps showed up in Sacramento. Of course, if the payoff had been a day later, the money probably wouldn’t have been wired at all, once they knew the shooters blew the hit.”

“This is a lot of speculation, Ollie.”

“Yeah, but take a look at this.” He showed him another account from U.S. National Bank of Sacramento. “Harper withdrew the thirty-five thousand two hours after it was wired. And see this notation?” Clarence nodded. “That means cash. Thirty-five thousand in cash. If he was going to buy a boat, make a down payment on a house, whatever, he would’ve written a check. When you take out that kind of cash, it means you don’t want a paper trail linking you to whoever you’re going to hand it over to.”

“But Norcoast’s office has to have financial records. They’ve got to be able to explain the thirty-five thousand.”

“No doubt they
can
explain it. Harper does political consulting on the side. He might have even made a phony billing sheet for his time. But no matter how they explain it, I say it’s no coincidence the shooters came up with thirty-two thousand in cash to get that Mercedes. How many people besides Harper and our perps do you suppose were walking around Sacramento with that kind of money?”

“What next, Ollie?”

“I could go a couple of directions. One, keep working behind the scenes, building the case, and go for Harper in one fell swoop. Two, contact Harper, ask him some questions, see if I can get him nervous and flush him out.”

“Which are you going to do?”

“My gut tells me I should send in my dogs and see if I can flush this bird out in the open.” Ollie picked up the phone and dialed Harper’s private line, pressing the speakerphone for Clarences benefit, and turning the volume on low.