A Capital Offense

by Gary Parker

  In the last few months, though, things had changed with some of those people. The changes were subtle to be sure, but noticeable nonetheless. Many seemed cooler toward him, at times even standoffish. Though he tried not to get paranoid, it seemed that some crossed the street when they saw him coming. Others, when they talked to him, kept their conversations short. People treated him as if he had the flu and they wanted to keep a distance so none of his germs spewed onto them.

  Jack sighed, resigned to their attitudes. He knew when he got into this fight that a lot of people might respond negatively. But he hadn’t known how lonely it would make him feel.

  “Where do you want to meet?” he asked, pushing away his unpleasant thoughts. “I don’t know many late-night spots. I’m usually in bed by 10:30.”

  The caller laughed, but it sounded forced. “You imply that I do know those spots?”

  “Let’s just say the odds are better for you than me.”

  “But I thought you weren’t a gambling man, my friend.”

  “I’m meeting you, aren’t I?”

  The man laughed again. “Indeed. You know the parking area for the Katy Trail on the north side of the bridge?”

  Jack nodded. “Sure, I know the spot. Take the family over there from time to time for a walk or a bike ride.”

  “Meet me there at midnight.”

  Jack leaned forward, grabbed his baseball again, and squeezed it. Though not exactly scared, a ripple of unease washed over him. The Katy Trail, a bike path converted from an old railroad line, came to an end in a dark, secluded area on the opposite side of the Missouri River from Jefferson City. Not the safest of places at midnight.

  “Isn’t that a bit dramatic?” he asked.

  “We can’t go anywhere public.”

  “What about a parking lot somewhere, a grocery store maybe?”

  “You want the cops to find us, think we’re a couple of teenagers doing drugs? I don’t think so.”

  Jack tossed his baseball, then caught it again. Might as well go to the Katy Trail. If two people needed a place where no one would see them, then he couldn’t think of a better location. Midnight was far too late, but that might actually help. With Connie asleep, he might manage to sneak in without her knowing exactly when he got home.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “The Katy Trail at midnight.”

  “Thanks, Jack. You won’t regret it.” The line went dead.

  Jack hung up and stared at his baseball, but he didn’t really see it. His mind had already skipped away, moving forward to the night about to unfold. So much came down to tonight.

  Standing, he stepped around his desk and stared through the door at his bookstore. Almost all his dreams lay just beyond that door. The Good Books Store, opened fifteen years ago. Thousands of books lined the white wooden shelves. He had fought hard to make his store succeed. Worked sixteen hours a day those first few years. Sold books at cut-rate prices, making just enough profit to put food on the table and clothes on his family. Provided service to his customers that made shopping at the chain stores feel like a visit to a dentist with bad breath.

  Gradually, he had made progress. The last few years had actually seen real growth. Not that he didn’t have some worries yet. One good recession and any independent retailer could go down. But things were better. Another two or three good years and he could begin to relax a bit. He could finish the novel he currently had under construction and spend more time with Sunset and the kids.

  Jack’s eyes moistened as he thought of his family. Even his love for the store paled in comparison to his love for his wife and children. An orphan since the age of ten, he knew better than most that nothing meant as much as flesh and blood. His family completed him as surely as a beach completed an ocean. Without them, he couldn’t exist. With them, he could survive anything life brought.

  With Connie beside him, he had sunk his roots in the rich soil of Jefferson City. The town—his home ever since he finished his English degree at the University of Missouri—had a solid feel to it, an enduring quality like the cliffs that bordered it on the north side of the Missouri River. In Jefferson City, children could safely ride their bikes on the streets and elderly women could walk alone to shop. Not many places like that left in the world.

  Jack didn’t want that quality of life to disappear, to crumble like a weak wall under the wash of a flood. But, from what he knew and believed, gambling threatened to do just that—to rumble through the city, flushing away the underpinnings of the community in its wake.

  That’s why he had begun to speak out when he learned the gamblers had set their sights on the state capital, why he had gathered a coalition of people who agreed with him into an organized group, why he had spent hours at city council meetings and on the phone talking to people in hopes of convincing them that gambling was a dangerous parasite that gobbled up its hosts. That’s why he refused to give up and go away in spite of the fact that former customers no longer bought their newspapers and books in his store. He had to do the right thing. For him, it boiled down to that simple thought. If he wanted to sleep well at night, he had to do what was right. A bit of homespun poetry his granddaddy had taught him a long time ago.

  The memory of his granddad’s wisdom lifting his spirits, Jack dropped his baseball into the desk drawer, grabbed the stack of books, including the black spiral notebook, off the edge of his desk and jammed them into a denim backpack. Then, without saying a word to either of his two coworkers, he stepped out the back door.

  Tossing his backpack onto the seat, he climbed into his white pickup and drove straight down the alley that ran parallel with his store. His mind clicking a thousand miles a minute, he came to a stop sign, turned right, then left again onto Main Street. There, deep in thought, he missed his chance to see Connie and Katie as they drove in the opposite direction toward the Good Books Store where they fully expected to find him.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Though not really hungry, Jack drove to a fast food restaurant and picked up a chicken sandwich with some fries and a soft drink. Then, looking for a place to think for a few minutes before the council meeting, he parked under an oak tree beside the Governor’s Mansion and tried to eat. But not much went down.

  After a couple of forced swallows, he gave up, dropped the sandwich back into the bag and leaned his head against the seat. The phone call at his office concerned him more than anything he could ever remember, more than anything since the death of his mother and father thirty years earlier. It reminded him of the fragility of life, the utter weakness of everything he thought strong. In a way he’d never grasped before, he came to understand that an entire life could get swept away as easily as a spiderweb hanging in a busy doorway. It didn’t make sense, but it was true. His response to the phone call would determine the outcome of at least two entire families: his own and that of the man on the other end of the line.

  Considering his options, Jack desperately wanted to talk to Connie. Everything in him cried out to tell her his dilemma. Better than anyone else, she would know how to advise him. Keeping with her steady approach to life, she would assess the predicament, logically outline every option, and make a calm decision. Though she did get feisty at times, even then she never seemed flustered, and her analytical abilities astounded him.

  Jack admired Connie’s tough-minded qualities and often kidded her about them. “If Connie found herself at dinner on a cruise liner and the ship began to sink,” he told their friends, “she’d insist on washing the dishes before she took to a lifeboat. Then, once on the lifeboat, she’d know exactly how far to the nearest shore.” Sadly, he couldn’t take advantage of Connie’s advice on this. Not today and, based on what decision he made, maybe not ever.

  He took a sip of soft drink and felt a sense of grief in his gut. Through persistent effort, he had worked hard to share more with Connie, even that which he feared would upset her. But to tell her what he knew would bring something more tragic into her life than he wanted
her to experience.

  Jack glanced at his watch. The sky had darkened and the breeze had picked up. Five minutes later, he arrived at the council meeting and sat down quietly in the back. A number of people turned and nodded to him as he took his seat, but no one said anything. Everyone was too intent on the events unfolding in the front of the auditorium.

  Pushing away his worries, Jack also focused on the proceedings. Everything moved according to the agenda—a final meeting to determine if Casino Royale would receive city approval for a state license to set up a gambling boat on the shores of the capital city. Cedric Blacker, the front man for the Casino Royale, rolled out his presentation—complete with a slick video showing a majestic paddle-wheel riverboat steaming down the Missouri. After the video, he unfolded a full-color chart depicting projects the city could accomplish using the five million dollars a year the gambling taxes would provide. Finished with that, he unveiled an artist’s rendition of the riverfront— complete with a dock and a slew of shops that would follow a successful boat.

  Biting his tongue, Jack studied Blacker. The man did have style. Though in his early fifties, he had hair the color and consistency of motor oil, and he kept himself trim and well-tanned. He wore a double-breasted gray suit over a white shirt so creased you could cut bread with it. Blacker’s ability to turn a phrase matched his sharp appearance.

  “The Casino Royale will be a good neighbor,” Blacker said, smiling at the council. “We’ll put down roots here. We want the same thing you do. We want Jefferson City to thrive. If the city thrives, so do we. We’ll bring our families here too. If we didn’t think this boat was good for this community, we wouldn’t bring it here. Together we’ll make a difference. . . . ”

  Though Blacker continued to talk, Jack’s mind wandered. He had heard it all more times than he cared to remember. Representatives of the Casino Royale and other gambling interests had spent almost two years and $400,000 making the same speech to anyone who would listen. Bring in the gamblers and grow. Raise tax dollars for the schools. Provide occupants for the hotels.

  Jack studied the members of the city council, wondering what they thought of Blacker’s sales pitch. The council members knew about the dirty underbelly of gambling; Jack had made sure of that. He had given them enough nasty statistics to choke a good-sized horse. They knew that gambling inevitably created crime—from petty thievery to loan-sharking. They were aware of the economic negatives—the increased money spent on police personnel, the additional funds necessary to pay for social problems, including gambling addictions. They had seen the statistics; people would spend their money in the casino and therefore have less to spend in other recreational pursuits like restaurants, movies, and bowling alleys.

  Sure, the gamblers who came to town would spend money, but not in the local shops and establishments. They would spend their cash on the riverboat—shove it into slot machines, lay it down on roulette wheels, wager it on crap tables and blackjack hands. Though gambling promised prosperity, it brought pain and anguish, cannibalizing the local economy and sending the money back to Las Vegas.

  Jack knew the one truth about gambling that the owners of the casinos never told: The house eventually wins and the people who gamble inevitably lose. That’s the way the owners of the boats stacked the odds. Otherwise, how did they make money?

  The council knew all this, but that didn’t make Jack any more confident. Knowledge didn’t guarantee a person would respond reasonably. The people on the council came to the table with their own agendas.

  People like the mayor, Johnson Mack, a gravel-voiced, gray-haired real estate developer who had moved to Jefferson City about seven years ago. A mover and a shaker, Mack had gotten involved in the community in a hurry. Spending money, throwing parties, building residential and commercial buildings, meeting and winning over the old guard of the city with large contributions to their favorite charities and local schools. Before too long, he ran for school board, then city council. Only last year, he became mayor.

  The owner of several old buildings near the site of a proposed convention center just off Main Street, Mack had offered Jack a price for his store. Apparently, he needed the property to complete his package for the convention center.

  Jack knew Mack wasn’t on his side and that what Mack wanted on the council he almost always got. So, Jack knew he wouldn’t win in these chambers. That didn’t surprise or bother him. Though he had asked for it in two meetings just like this one, he never expected the council to follow his advice and pass an ordinance against gambling. He wasn’t that naive. But, what he wanted from the city council he had already received. And what he wanted was press coverage.

  Though an amateur in its practice, Jack had long been an astute observer of politics. Living in the capital city, he had studied the tricks of scores of public officials. Gradually, the lessons he had learned from others became ingrained in him. Intuitively, he now understood what every political pro in the world knew as well as he knew the names of his children: The media loves controversy and will cover the person who can provide it for them. With that knowledge as his ace in the hole, Jack had used the city council and its public forum as a way to create and stir a full-blown conflict. For the normally quiet town of Jefferson City, the public battle over gambling made for days and days of headlines. With the media as his unintentional ally, he communicated his message over and over again.

  His message? Simple. Gambling makes promises it can’t keep. Like a mangy dog, it brings fleas. Crime, corruption, poverty, despair, even suicide. Jack had the facts and the studies from numerous reputable universities to prove it, and he pumped those facts to the media over and over again. More times than not, they repeated what he said. Jack and his supporters didn’t have much money, but that didn’t mean they came to the fray without weapons.

  Jack smiled as he reviewed the last few months. His tactics had thrown the gambling interests on the defensive. He had pointed out the negatives of gambling, and the riverboat proponents, not quite sure how to counterattack against a well-liked local guy, fell off their message. Instead of having free rein to talk about all the benefits of gambling, they had to spend time and money to disprove “Jack’s Facts,” as his supporters had begun to call his avalanche of statistics.

  Watching Cedric Blacker’s seamless report, Jack wondered if any of it would matter. Yes, he believed with all his heart that the Lord wanted him in this fight, that Jesus disliked it when people gambled away money they should use to buy food and clothing for children, that trying to get something for nothing contradicted the whole notion of living out of dependence on God. Yet, people often chose to ignore the life God preferred for them. In a democratic system, if the people wanted gambling, then God or no God, the government would give them gambling. And, with plans to spend another $300,000 to “get the vote out,” the gambling interests had enough money to convince the people they wanted a casino.

  Jack rubbed his eyes. His group, the Coalition for the Future, had spent about $25,000—pocket change for the boys from Vegas.

  As Blacker finished speaking, Jack stood and made a hurried exit, not stopping to chitchat with anyone. Outside, he checked his watch. Almost ten o’clock. He thought about calling Connie, then decided against it. She would want to know where he was, what he was doing, where he was going. But he couldn’t tell her.

  He climbed into his truck and pulled off, headed left. Fifteen minutes later, he parked in front of the River City Community Church, an interdenominational congregation of just over two hundred members. For a second, he sat still and stared at the red-brick building. He had loved this church since the day he first saw it nineteen years ago. Though different in worship style, the church architecture reminded him of his granddaddy’s Lutheran church in Miller, Missouri, the church in which he became a follower of Jesus.

  A bell tower pointed to the sky. A wooden door, painted a dark red, was the front entrance. Most remarkable of all, the pastor of the church, the Reverend Rodney Wallace h
ad a voice that sounded almost identical to that of Justin Longley, the grandfather who raised Jack after his parents’ deaths.

  Jack rolled down the window and took a deep breath, inhaling the moist air of a spring still pulsing, the breeze heavy with the blooming of the redbuds, tulip trees, oaks, and maples that dominated the city. The smell of spring carried him back to his childhood, to the farm outside of Miller, to the good days after the bad ones, the eight years with Justin that helped him recover from the year before, the year a house fire snuffed out the lives of his mom and dad.

  Jack climbed out of the truck. Then, hoisting his backpack over his left shoulder, he walked up the sidewalk, pulled a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the side door. Glad his volunteer position as church treasurer gave him such access, he stepped through the door, down the hall, and into the sanctuary. A glint of approval sparked in his blue eyes as he surveyed the place. Plain wood pews, unadorned by cushions. The simple but elegant communion table in the center up front, a silver chalice in the middle of the table, and a golden candelabra on either side of the chalice. Underneath his shoes, he felt the church’s stone floor, worn by almost a hundred years of use.

  Walking softly, Jack eased into the third pew from the front on the left side, the pew where he sat every Sunday with Connie and Daniel and Katie. He had met Connie in this very pew eighteen years ago, the second year after he moved to Jefferson City.

  Jack slid his backpack off his shoulder and rubbed his hands across the pew bottom. So much rested on what he did or didn’t do tonight. If the worst happened, and he knew full well it might, he and his family would probably have to leave Jefferson City. Bending at the waist, he leaned forward until his head rested on the back of the pew in front of him. Then, as fervently as he knew how, he sought the face of God.