by Randy Alcorn
Clarence read aloud the four bumper stickers plastered on the car’s rear. “Save the Males. Visualize Whirled Peas. Legalize Lutefisk.” He leaned over to take a close look at a badly faded sticker. “What does this one say? Okay, I got it. Save the Planet: Kill Yourself.”
Clarence looked at Ollie and shook his head.
“Hey,” Ollie said, shrugging his shoulders, “everybody’s got their causes.”
The phone rang late Sunday evening, and Clarence jumped up to get it.
“Take a deep breath,” Ollie said.
“Why? What happened?”
“Just got some bad news.”
“What?”
“It’s Gracie Miller.”
“What about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“Another key witness dies. And another drug overdose?” Ollie threw up his hands at their Monday morning meeting. “Leesa and Gracie might have been our best shots at breaking this thing. I think I was really close to cutting a deal with Gracie. Three drug overdoses if we count yours, and two of them fatal. Drugs seem to be the weapon of choice here.”
“Even though she set me up,” Clarence said, “I really feel bad for Gracie.”
“Gracie? Her type’s always expendable. Like the girls that go to L.A. to become movie stars. Most of them end up hookers, beaten up by their pimps and their johns, dying from bad needles and God knows what diseases. Gracie died in Portland. Saved her the drive to Hollywood.” Ollie looked at the floor. “Yeah. I feel bad for her too.”
“Where does this leave us?” Clarence asked.
“We got clearance to check out Gracie’s room where her father found her body,” Manny said. “I came across this envelope,” he held it up for Clarence to inspect, “on her dresser, under a makeup stand. Still had some cash in it. Twelve fifty-dollar bills. Don’t know how much was in it originally.”
“You think it was a payoff?” Clarence asked.
“Notice the blue lining in the envelope,” Ollie said. “And the penciled number two on it. What does that remind you of?”
“Didn’t Mookie say something about an envelope?”
“Yeah, with a blue lining and a penciled number three.” Ollie said. “Makes you wonder if there was a number four, doesn’t it? But one thing we know for sure.”
“What’s that?” Clarence asked.
“There had to be a number one,” Manny said.
“I figure number one dealt directly with the payoff person,” Ollie said. “He might have been the go-between from the money man to Gracie and Mookie. No way the big guy would deal directly with them—too high risk. So number one could be Gangster Cool or Shadow, maybe both working together. Since Gracie called Shadow when I told her I knew who hired her, five’s got you ten he’s her contact. She suddenly overdoses and she’s conveniently out of the way. And since everybody knew she was a user, it’s not even suspicious. Everything’s pointing to Shadow right now. With Leesa and Gracie and Gangster Cool all history, Shadow’s our link to the big fish, the Norcoast connection.”
“But Shadow won’t be easy to get to,” Manny said. “The guys I’ve talked to on the Gang Enforcement Team say Shadow’s tough, maybe as hard as GC. Everybody knows Shadow killed that kid Sylvester on MLK—and Raphael, the Woodlawn Park Blood. But there’s no proof. He might not ever break.”
“No fingerprints but Gracie’s on the envelope,” Ollie said. “Was hoping there’d be one on the stickum, but nothing. I did have them scrape the gummy seal at crime lab. They found some DNA.”
“DNA?” Clarence asked. “You mean, from the person who sealed the envelope?”
“Who else? It wasn’t Gracie’s saliva, we know that,” Ollie said. “It was whoever licked the envelope.”
“Saliva? But isn’t it all dried up?”
“Hey, they’ve run conclusive DNA matches from the backside of a forty-year-old postage stamp.”
“No kidding? Saliva has DNA just like blood?”
“Not exactly. Saliva has skin sluffage in it, and that carries DNA.”
“Skin sluffage?”
“Yeah, skin from the inside of the mouth. It leaves a nucleated discharge.”
“You sound like a scientist, Ollie.”
“Yeah, well, you have to know all sorts of things to be a good detective, and I don’t just mean who serves cherry pie after midnight, though that’s important too. DNA testing is all about nucleated cells. Red blood cells won’t do; you need white blood cells, which aren’t just in blood, they’re in skin. When we get a warrant to go after somebody, we take them to a medical facility, or if they’re in jail, the nurse takes two vials of their blood and swabs their mouth with a Q-Tip. Then they air dry it, and you’ve got your saliva match as well as your blood match. It just gives you something extra.”
“Are you saying we can trace down who licked this envelope?” Clarence asked.
“Theoretically, yes,” Ollie said. “Practically, no.”
“Why not?”
“Except for sex offenders, we don’t routinely keep DNA files on people. It’s not like fingerprints. I mean, even fingerprints, we only have people who’ve been booked, right? But DNA? We don’t have much to test it against. Just for the heck of it, I ran our results against what we’ve got on computer, but nothing came up. I would have been shocked if it had.”
“But couldn’t you get an order to take a sample from a suspect?”
“Only if there’s probable cause, which has to be proven to a judge, who has to issue a warrant. Same old deal. We’d want to test Norcoast and Gray, right? But what’s our evidence? We don’t have anything close to probable cause. ‘Yes, your honor, I was hoping to get two blood vials from Norcoast because, well, in my humble opinion he just seems to me to be oozing with slime.’ Trust me, they won’t buy it.”
Manny excused himself, and Ollie took a call. Five minutes later he got off.
“Question, Ollie,” Clarence said. “If a private citizen was collecting DNA samples, just as a hobby or whatever, all he’d have to do is get something with a person’s blood, right?”
“Right.”
“Or something that’s been in contact with an open mouth, with saliva, even if it’s dry, right?”
“Right. But it would have to be done carefully.”
“Like put it in a baggy or something?”
“Yeah. But the private citizen would have to act on his own,” Ollie said. “If the police initiated it, it would be inadmissible.”
“But even if it was inadmissible, it could still be helpful, couldn’t it?”
“Yeah. And it would probably be admissible as long as the police didn’t suggest or initiate anything or give approval to it.”
Clarence packed up his briefcase and headed for the door. “Later, Ollie.”
“Hold it, Clarence. I hate to say it, but this whole thing with Gracie …”
“What?”
“Police and everybody else are going to ask who had the most to gain through this girl’s death. Obviously, you’re near the top of the list. With her gone, the DA might consider dropping the case. But whether or not he does, some people are going to think you were involved. I’ve heard it already.”
“It happened last night, right? I was home with my family the whole evening. They can all testify to that.”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Ollie said. “But with Gracie overdosing, people are still going to wonder if you were behind it. Going to think you’re the one who got her on drugs or whatever. I’m just trying to prepare you for the critics. I know a little bit about it. Lots of people still believe I’m a brutal racist.”
Clarence walked the Portland streets during his lunch hour, thinking about Gracie and her short life. His mind drifted back to the projects. He was playing basketball as a fourteen-year-old, watching out of the corner of his eye as the hoods stood on the side and shot craps, played the dozens, and intimidated the meek. He remembered all the admiring females watching them and how it spurred them on. He
remembered how the guys acted around the girls, all the posturing and showing off and saying, “Gimme yo’ phone number, baby. Please. I’ll die without yo’ phone number.” Rappin’ to babes was a ritual, an art form.
One girl came to mind—Tisha. At first he’d thought she was very pretty, a black version of Gracie. But Tisha was easy, and the guys used her up like a carton of cigarettes, disposing of the carton when they were done. After a while her eyes went vacant. A couple years after moving, Clarence heard from his cousin Franky that Tisha had committed suicide. Tisha. Gracie. Tisha’s image had always haunted him. He considered the different ways black men and black women had suffered.
Clarence walked back toward the Trib. He went down a couple of streets and sat on a bench by a patch of grass, watching the city go on around him.
He loved the sights and sounds and smells of the city. The aroma of Vietnamese food, of Thai and Chinese and Creole. The sounds of shop bells ringing as customers entered. The bustle, the activity, the smorgasbord of endless variety. The libraries, the art and culture, the communication, the exchange of ideas.
He hated the sights and sounds and smells of the city. The abandoned businesses, broken windows, graffiti, stolen and beaten-up shopping carts, the incessant honking, the sirens, the pungent smell of uncollected garbage and urine on alley walls. He hated the flashing lights of porno shops that stripped and sold paper women, reminding him how his great-grandmother was sold to the highest bidder. He hated the city that had taken Dani and Felicia from him and now had stolen his hard-earned reputation. The city that killed kids with so much potential, kids like Robby, Leesa, Jason, Raymond, and Gracie.
He remembered visits to his cousin in Jackson, where on hot days they put the big wrench to the fire hydrants and kids played in the spurting water. He could still see the market where fruits and vegetables lay out in stands on the street. People dropped their money in little wicker baskets and made their own change, and at the end of the day the shopkeeper had just the right amount of money or maybe a little extra. Now everything of value was locked up, with huge steel bars and security cameras and alarm systems. Cars had the Club and those obnoxious alarms that went on for hours. The city was no longer community. It was chaos, physically and morally dirty.
This part of downtown, where he now sat, was city at its best. Where he was living, in Dani’s place, felt sometimes like city at its worst. Life got compressed in the city. Children looked like teens, teens looked twice their age, people in their thirties and forties who in the suburbs would have been playing golf and dressed in jogging suits looked old and worn and beaten up, deep furrows cutting across their faces. The people aged with the neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods dried up like fruit long ago fallen from the tree.
Portland’s newer houses, the nice ones, were gradually becoming their own walled cities. They had security entrances, bars keeping out unwanted vehicles, security guards, special passcards. They reminded him of a military compound. Only authorized people could even take a walk in the area. Almost all were white, Asian, or Middle Eastern. Very few were black, Hispanic, or American Indian. It was more of a wealth divide than a racial divide—rich blacks and Hispanics could live up there too. But those outside the walls were at the bottom of the food chain. And the bottom feeders were the ones those inside the walled cities feared most.
The city seemed to Clarence a house whose foundation was collapsing, chipped away and eroded for too many years. It seemed beyond repair. Today he had no hope for the city.
Dani gazed intently at the great city, so high that even with her enhanced vision she couldn’t see the top. The city was still being built, though it looked nearly complete. Many of Michael’s legions came and went from it on missions of delivery and construction, she supposed. She longed to see it up close, as one longs for a new house to be finished so she can walk through it at last. In this case the anticipation was even greater because she’d never even seen the floor plan. She knew the Carpenter was supervising the building project, though, and that knowledge thrilled her.
Standing there she understood as never before that she’d spent her life on earth in a rented room, on borrowed time. With less than her new world she could never again be satisfied. The only good reason for loving the old world was that sometimes, in its grandest moments, it seemed a little like this one.
The New Jerusalem, the city of God before her, called to her as only home can.
“How can a place be home when I’ve never set foot there?” She spoke aloud to Torel and Lewis, then smiled and answered her own question. “When your beloved has promised he is preparing it for you.”
Dani remembered Clarence once telling her how the idea of heaven being a city left him cold. She had no answer then, but she did now. He was thinking of the only cities he knew, with their pollution and dirt and crime and poverty and noise and conflict. She realized now this heavenly city would have the freshness and vitality and openness of the country—all the things for which Clarence loved the country— with the vibrancy and interdependence and relationships of the city. And with none of the divisions, racial and otherwise, that marred both city and country in the Shadowlands.
Lewis put his hand on her shoulder. “Elyon’s Book says his people spent their lives in the Shadowlands longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Elyon says that in the dark world his children do not have an enduring city but are to look for the city that is to come. Tell me, what is a city?”
Dani thought about her tutor’s question. “A place of many residences close to each other. Where the inhabitants are under a common government. A place of varied and bustling activity, communication, interaction, jobs, duties, creative expression. Art and music and drama.”
“Yes,” Lewis said. “Elyon says that the patriarchs did not gain on earth what God had promised them. But that was all right because they looked forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. Whether or not Adam’s race knows it, until they at last enter its gates, they will always be looking for the city that is to come. Man’s first emptiness is for a person, the person of Christ. His second emptiness is for a place, the place Christ prepares for him. Those who do not understand this waste their lives in the Shadowlands trying to fill the emptiness with anything and everything but the one person and place that can truly fill it.”
“I know the city will be wondrous,” Dani said, “but I can’t imagine anything greater than this place we stand in now.”
“That is the nature of heaven,” Torel said. “You always experience what is beyond your imagination. But once you experience it, your imagination is stretched farther. Instead of imagination always surpassing reality, as it did on earth, here reality always surpasses imagination.”
“It seems too good to be true.”
“In Elyon’s realm, everything that is good is true,” said the angel. “You are in the perimeter of heaven, having just stepped inside. You stand in the foyer of heaven’s auditorium, the entryway to the city. If the foyer is so wondrous, what do you think the auditorium will be? If the gateway is so grand, what do you think the city will be?”
“I knew he promised a place for us. I just couldn’t imagine it would be so … extraordinary.”
“As you prepared a room,” Torel said, “for each of your children—I was there when you did, you know—Elyon’s Son prepares a room for each child that arrives in his world. The quality of the room you prepared was limited both by your abilities and your resources. Elyon lacks neither. The great city will one day be moved to the new earth, and at last you will enter the place he has made for you.”
“Somehow I never envisioned this city as an actual place. I thought the descriptions were figurative.”
Torel looked perplexed, while Lewis smiled. “What does a figurative place look like?” Torel asked. “How do you eat a figurative meal, drink figurative water, walk on figurative streets, or sing figurative songs? I do not understand the human compulsion to reject the plain mean
ing of Elyon’s Word.”
“But,” she said looking at the city, “it’s so huge.”
“It is exactly the size Elyon told you it would be,” Torel said. “Did you not read Elyon’s Book where he laid out the precise measurements of the eternal city? I am confounded at all the things your people were plainly told in Elyon’s Word but which you act amazed about when you get here. Will you also be amazed to find flowing water, trees, brilliant jewels, and golden streets polished to appear like transparent glass? I can understand why seeing such things would amaze you. But to be surprised at their very existence when Elyon revealed them to you is beyond my understanding.”
“This whole place is beyond my understanding,” Dani said, laughing. She looked through the portal at Clarence, sitting sullenly on a city bench. “Yet I understand so much more than my brother does. It’s so hard for him. Why must he go through this? Why is Elyon permitting him to suffer so much?”
“Imagine a man shut up in a dark room with no windows,” Lewis said. “He has only a few oil lamps. The comfort they bring keeps him in the room, grasping on to their tiny flickering light which cannot satisfy and cannot last. To experience the full light of day, the man need only walk out of the dark room, go to the front door, open it up, and step out into the sunlight. But as long as the flickering light of the oil lamp is there, he will not leave it, he will cling to its meager light. If you loved such a man, if you wanted the best for him, what would you do?”
“I’m not sure,” Dani said.
“You would blow out the little man-made lamps,” Lewis said. “Once he was free from their hold, you would lead him through the darkness and toward the door, so at last he could behold the light of heaven.”
“Hello, Mr. Abernathy. How are you?” Sheila’s upbeat voice convinced Clarence she wasn’t thinking ill of him.
“Well, things are a little tough right now, but I’ll make it. Can I speak to Reg Norcoast, please? Or if he’s not available, Carson Gray?”
