by Randy Alcorn
“I don’t think he’s laughing, Ollie.”
“Why’s that?”
Clarence told him the story of the phony lie detector test. Ollie listened intently, raising his eyebrows and trying not to smile.
“You scare me, Abernathy. You shouldn’t be doin’ stuff like that.” He tried to look stern. Then he said, “You really told him he’d killed me?”
“Sure. If he thought he’d killed my friend, it made it more believable that I was willing to kill him.”
“You told him I was your friend?”
“Hey, maybe I exaggerated, I don’t know. I’ve got the tape. Want to hear it?”
“I’m not sure. No matter what we try to get Shadow on, his lawyer’s going to demand that tape. You might want to destroy it before it becomes trial evidence and it’s too late. I better not hear it. We’ll go after Shadow, all right—awfully creepy to kill those girls. Still, he’s not the big fish. The marlins I want to reel in are Norcoast and Gray.”
Three days after the crack house shooting, Ollie called Clarence at the Trib. He spoke cryptically, inviting him to go for a drive in the afternoon. “I’ve got a surprise for you. Somebody I want you to meet.”
“Okay, give me two hours to finish my column.” Clarence didn’t feel like being surprised or meeting anyone, but he agreed.
Clarence disciplined himself not to open his mail until he wrote his column. He’d learned that the hard way the last few days. He read through a story on the front page of the Tribune: “Racist Drug Prosecutions Provoke Lawsuit.” He shook his head in amazement at what the article seemed to be saying. Some of his best columns were backlashes to headlines. He started typing.
Yesterday another lawsuit was filed by a bevy of civil rights organizations claiming that the disproportionate number of blacks prosecuted for using and dealing crack cocaine proves racial bias.
I have in front of me information not presented in this article—the racial breakdowns of defendants for every type of drug-related offense. Did you know 63 percent of powder cocaine defendants are Hispanics? Or that most heroin prosecutions are of Asians? Or that whites constitute two-thirds of all marijuana defendants and over 85 percent of all LSD defendants, and that a disproportionate number (by 10 percent) of whites are arrested for dealing methamphetamines?
In regard to this civil rights lawsuit, the question is, why are a disproportionate number of blacks being prosecuted for crack cocaine? Dare I suggest a simple and obvious answer—crack cocaine is used and sold by a disproportionate number of blacks!
What’s the solution to this statistical inequality? Well, we could let 95 percent of blacks who sell crack go free, just to even things up. They could go right on inflicting untold suffering on the black community. (By the way, for those who complain about longer sentences for crack dealers, ask law-abiding blacks if they want them back on the streets.) Or we could recruit more whites to sell crack so they can go to jail in equal proportion to blacks. Of course, to be consistent, we’ll also need to recruit more blacks to sell meth, LSD, and powder cocaine, more Hispanics to sell heroin, and more Asians to sell crack. Equality—isn’t it grand?
“Where exactly are we going?” Clarence asked as Ollie drove into Gresham, glancing down at written directions resting on his left thigh.
“You’ll find out,” Ollie said, wincing from his sore ribs. He navigated onto some remote back road Clarence didn’t even know existed. They came to a long driveway, lined with thick trees that seemed somehow familiar even though Clarence knew he hadn’t been on this road.
“Hey,” Clarence pointed to the cyclone fence on his left. “We’re on the other side of the Springwater Trail. That’s Hugo’s place, isn’t it?” Just as he asked, he heard the Rottweiler barking.
Ollie drove up and parked. “Hi ya, fella,” Clarence called as he got out of the car. Hugo stared at him, head tilted. An old man in a thick flannel shirt, with disheveled white hair, walked out of the dilapidated house.
“You must be the detective,” the man said, looking Ollie over as if he was expecting someone more impressive. “I’m Floyd Kost.” They shook hands, and Ollie introduced him to Clarence.
“Well, Floyd,” Ollie asked, “is this the man?”
“Yep. No doubt about it.”
“What are you talking about?” Clarence asked.
“Well,” Ollie said, “I had Manny get me the names and phone numbers of the half-dozen houses nestled back near this section of the bike trail. I called each of them and asked if they remembered seeing some big lunk laying on a park bench three sheets to the wind. No luck in the first five calls. Floyd was call number six.”
“Come on in,” Floyd said. If Clarence had entered this room under other circumstances, one look would have convinced him the house had been robbed and the frustrated perpetrator hadn’t been able to find what he was looking for. Magazines and junk mail, both opened and unopened, were strewn around the living room. Clarence sat on the edge of an old couch. He looked at the date on the sun-bleached Reader’s Digest next to him. September 1988. Clarence had the impression they might be Floyd’s first visitors since this Reader’s Digest arrived. He looked out the window and saw Hugo. Beyond him was the bike trail. It seemed odd seeing something so familiar from an unfamiliar perspective.
“The detective tells me you call him Hugo,” Floyd said, pointing at the Rottweiler. “His name’s Sergeant. I’ve seen you feed him scraps before. Next to me, I think you’re his best friend. You’re the only other person who pays him any attention. I’m a hermit, I guess—lived here alone since my wife died eight years ago.”
“So,” Ollie said, “you can pinpoint the exact time it happened?”
“Well, sure. Peter Jennings comes on at six, and it was just before then.”
“Perfect,” Ollie said. “So walk us through what happened two weeks ago Wednesday.”
“Well, Sergeant was barkin’ up a storm, more than usual I mean. It was odd because there was no traffic on the trail, see—the weather had turned bad and it was almost dark. Finally I bundled up in my yellow raincoat, and Sergeant was pullin’ on me like he was a sled dog, flyin’ down that trail like a bat out of hell. I figured he’d caught the scent of a coyote or something. But we come to the bench and there was this big fellow,” he pointed at Clarence. “Mr. Abernathy, was it? The detective tells me you’re some big-shot reporter or something, but I don’t read the newspaper anymore. Peter Jennings and Oprah and Geraldo and them tell me all I need to know. Anyways, I’ve seen you stretchin’ out on that bench before, but I thought it was downright peculiar to see you out in the rain like that. Ol’ Sergeant runs right up to you and sniffs you like you’re real familiar. That’s how I was sure it was you, because he treats strangers different. Anyways, he goes right up and licks your hand, then he goes to your bike pack and sniffs for the goodies. He got pretty upset when you didn’t wake up. I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did you do?” Clarence asked.
“Well, I was afraid to touch you. Figured you’d just fallen asleep and if I shook you, you might jump up and attack me, like one of those crazy Vietnam vets—I saw a movie about them.”
Clarence smiled and pointed to Ollie. “He’s the crazy Vietnam vet. I’m just a normal guy.”
Floyd eyed Ollie suspiciously, then continued. “Anyways, I just came over and saw you were breathin’ fine, chest movin’ up and down. And you were all bundled up in your sweatshirt and pants and a windbreaker. I’m one to mind my own business, so I just turned around and went home, got in just when Peter Jennings came on. Well, I watched local news at six-thirty, then Jeopardy and Entertainment Tonight—I’m not a big Wheel of Fortune fan, see—then Seinfeld, and by that time it was eight-thirty.” Floyd stopped talking and just looked at his guests.
“And…then?” Ollie asked.
“Well, by now Sergeant was getting hoarse, poor fella. He’d just kept barking like Lassie when the farmer’s trapped under a tractor. The thought kept naggin’
at me that maybe you were still out there and really in trouble. See, dogs know things people don’t. So I thought before the nine o’clock movie comes on, I better see if you were still out there, because if you were, I was gonna try to wake you and if I couldn’t, I’d call 911. Maybe make it on that 911 television thing for saving your life, who knows?
“So, anyways, I finally went out with my flashlight, but without Sergeant this time because he was just throwin’ a fit. Well, I got to the bench and you weren’t there, but I thought I heard something up ahead. I walked farther toward where the trail crosses the road. I shined the flashlight just a little, didn’t want you to come after me. I saw you liftin’ your bike up to your car. Kind of scared me, because I could hear you talkin’ to yourself. Like you had mental problems or something. Saw somethin’ on Sixty Minutes about people like that.” Floyd’s voice rambled to a stop.
“What time was that?” Ollie asked.
“Well, I went out maybe fifteen or twenty minutes before the movie. Guess I probably saw him at his car ten minutes before nine.”
“Yeah,” Clarence said. “Yeah,” he said it with more enthusiasm. “I thought I saw a light, just for a second. I turned around and it was gone. Freaked me out a little. Geneva too. I wasn’t talking to myself, that was my wife. I was on the phone with her. She was kind of frantic, wanted me to keep talking to her.”
“One of those new-fangled phones you don’t plug in the wall, huh?” Floyd asked. “Seen those on TV.”
“So, Floyd,” Ollie said, “you’re absolutely positive this man was the same one you saw that night? And you’d tell that to a district attorney or a judge?”
“Well, I’m 99 percent sure. But the other witness, now he was 100 percent sure.”
“The other witness?” Clarence asked.
“Sergeant. Dogs know these things. He knows your scent from all the times you’ve stopped and petted him and given him treats—spoiled his dinner more than once, but I won’t blame you for that. Yeah, Sergeant knew it was you and nobody else. I could see that. Some district attorney or judge has some doubts? I’ll bring him in and show him how Sergeant reacts to strangers and then how he reacts to you. Won’t be any doubt then.”
“Well,” Ollie said, “hopefully we won’t need to subpoena Sergeant. But if we do, tell him there’s a steak in it for him.” He looked at Clarence, smiled, and stuck out his right hand. “Congratulations, big guy. You’ve got a Rottweiler for an alibi.”
Two days later a sworn statement from Floyd Kost, complete with copious references to television programs and how dogs know things, was submitted to the district attorney, with a copy going to Ollie.
“What happens now?” Clarence asked.
“If they believe Floyd and Sergeant are reliable, it establishes an ironclad alibi for you—from 5:40 to 8:50. That’s all you need. It proves Gracie was lying.”
“But what about the witnesses who say they saw me with Gracie at the light rail and the hotel?”
“Well, your alibi proves it wasn’t you. Hopefully the DA will realize they all just saw a big black man. None of those witnesses had actually seen you before. Floyd and Sergeant had. They knew what you looked like. And smelled like, in Sergeant’s case. The DA’s office will talk to Floyd, if they can pry him away from the tube. They’ll decide from there. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”
Ollie and Manny walked the back parking lot of the Taco Bell on MLK, Ollie chomping on a Double Decker Taco Supreme. When he finished, he opened the dumpster and dropped in his trash. He got down on his hands and knees to look under and behind the old brown dumpster, its paint scratched and peeling. Then he joined Manny in studying the old wooden fence, top to bottom.
Most of the graffiti was typical, the same stuff all over North Portland—tags from various Blood and Crip sets. “What’s with these?” Ollie asked, pointing to a couple of Hispanic gang tags. “This isn’t Latino turf.”
“Hey,” Manny said. “It’s Taco Bell. TB’s like the Mexican embassy.”
Ollie and Manny ended up studying the same piece of dark-blue graffiti. It was only five lines. The letters intersected each other, beautifully, but they were unintelligible, except the fifth line, which appeared to be a backward P-187.
Manny tried to translate, while Ollie went back inside.
“Herb, when was that back fence last painted?”
“We spray it over every couple of months to discourage all the taggin’. Let’s see, I’d have a copy of the work order in my files. You want the exact date?”
“Yeah, please.” Ollie eyed a stray burrito sitting on the rack.
“Help yourself,” Herb said, tossing him the burrito and heading to the back room. He reappeared as Ollie took his last bite. “Last painted August 28. We’re overdue. I’ll have to get on it.” He got Ollie a large Diet Coke.
“Thanks, Herb. Hey, hold off a little on that repaint for me, would you?” Ollie asked. He went out to his car, pulled a kit from under the seat, and took out his 35 mm Nikon along with a Polaroid. He shot a half-dozen pictures of the wall with the Polaroid, a dozen with the Nikon, most of them of the blue five-lined tag. As he and Manny drove off, Ollie picked up the phone and called gang enforcement.
“Lenny? I want the best, most experienced tagger you’ve got. Preferably a Crip. I’ve got some hieroglyphics I want him to translate.”
Clarence saw the light on in Jonah’s room and knocked on the door at ten-thirty in the evening. He heard a muffled voice and stuck his head into his son’s room.
“What are you reading, Jonah?”
“Huckleberry Finn.”
“Read it aloud to me. You can work on pronunciation.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re a good reader. I want to hear you.”
“I don’t think I like this book,” Jonah said.
“Why not?”
“Huck keeps trying to decide whether to turn in the runaway slave.”
“Jim?”
“Yeah. Jim. He says he thinks if he turns him in he’ll go to heaven, but if he helps him escape he’ll go to hell. That’s what his Aunt Sally and the church people told him.”
“Well, they were wrong, weren’t they?”
“I guess.”
“Here. Let me just pick a section and you read it. Okay? I want to hear you read.”
“Okay.” Jonah began to read, reluctantly at first, but his voice got more and more animated as the story picked up. He read a couple pages before coming to Huck telling his aunt Sally about a steamboat accident:
“We blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious. Anyone hurt?” Aunt Sally asked.
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well it’s lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt.”
Jonah stopped. “Daddy, why does it say that?”
“You mean nigger? That’s what they called blacks in those days. Huck was just ignorant. He shouldn’t have said it, but back then people just did.”
“But what about Aunt Sally? What did she mean? A black person got killed, but she says it was lucky nobody got hurt.”
“Well, I guess she just didn’t think of black folk as people.”
“But Aunt Sally was a Christian. That’s what the book says. We’re Christians, aren’t we Daddy?”
“Yeah, Son. And many of the slaves were Christians too.”
“But if she was a Christian, why would she say that?”
“Well, not everybody who claims to be a Christian is. And not everyone who is a Christian thinks the right way. Why don’t you just keep reading?”
Jonah put down the book. “I don’t want to read anymore.”
“As you know,” Cairo Clancy said to his congregation, “this morning our guest speaker is Pastor Ben Schaffer from First Church, just a mile and a half down the road from us. I’ve told you before I’ve been meeting weekly with Ben for nearly a year. We’ve talked about things that, very honestly, I’ve never talked about wi
th a white brother before. I’ve invited him to speak in our pulpit this week, and he’s invited me to their pulpit next week. Please give a warm welcome to my friend and brother, Ben Schaffer.”
The two men embraced long and hard, and as the embrace lingered, the applause intensified. Clarence sat between Geneva and his father. Next to Obadiah on the other side sat Harold Haddaway.
“It’s a great privilege to be in this pulpit,” Pastor Schaffer said. “I can’t express what my friendship with your pastor has meant to me. More about that later. I want to start with Ephesians 2:13, where God is talking about the racial divide between Jews and Gentiles. He says, ‘Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.’”
“Uh-huh!”
“Say it now.”
“Hallelujah.”
Pastor Schaffer looked surprised but energized by the commentary from the congregation. “Folks, the biggest racial divide in history was between Jews and Gentiles. And if that barrier is broken down in Christ, so is every racial barrier. This passage says that because of Christ’s work on the cross, we’re all part of the same family. Like it or not, we share the same Daddy, and that means we’re family. Now I, for one, like it. I like it very much. But it’s something we have to think through because this verse tells me that if I stand at arm’s length from brothers and sisters of another color, I am opposing nothing less than the finished work of Christ.”
“Amen.”
“Yessuh!”
“Preach it, pastor.”
