***
Jimmy called JT’s cell phone while he was eating a TV dinner. “How did you get my cell number?” JT asked once he discovered who his caller was.
Jimmy snorted. “Are you kidding me? This is the information age, Bubba. Get use to it.”
Rolling his eyes, JT demanded, “Don’t call me again.”
“See, that’s your problem, JT. You’ve never understood the rules of the game. Well let me school you.” He coughed, then continued. “See, the man holding all the cards gets to call the shots.”
What would it take to get rid of this loser? Fifteen years and no communication. Now Jimmy was staying in touch every day like they were best friends or something. Sneering into the telephone, JT asked, “What do you want?”
“Maybe I want to go to your house and have a visit with your pretty little wife. What do you think of that?”
JT’s grip tightened around the phone. His wife had put him out. He wasn’t at his home to protect his family from maggots like Jimmy Littleton. So he had to sell some pretty big wolf tickets to insure his family’s safety. JT put more bass in his voice as he said, “My family has nothing to do with this. Your beef is with me. But I swear to you, Jimmy, if you come to my house, I will shoot you.”
Jimmy laughed. “Would you have to put down your Bible to pick that gun up, or are hypocrites like you allowed to hold your gun and Bible at the same time?”
JT didn’t respond.
Jimmy continued. “Look, man. No sense getting upset. You wouldn’t be at your house if I stopped by anyway. That sweet little wife of yours threw your sorry self out last night. I watched you leave. I would have paid her a visit, but the police showed up.”
“Stay away from my family, do you hear me?”
Jimmy continued to taunt JT as he said, “Look at you. Getting all defensive over a woman you couldn’t care less about. The scuttlebutt says you only married her so her godfather would give you that congregation you got.”
JT told him, “Well your scuttlebutt is wrong. I love my wife.”
“Yeah, that’s usually the reason most men cheat. ‘Cause they’re so in love with their wives.”
JT slammed down the phone. After everything else, he didn’t have the energy to listen to a lecture from Jimmy Littleton. He laid his head down on his pillow and prepared for another sleepless night. Life had been so simple when God was on his side.
Chapter 11
When JT got to the church he called his mechanic to see when he would be able to pick up his car, and received a bit of happy news. His car would be ready by noon. Now if he could get his sermon done, he’d at least be able to deliver a clear and concise message on Sunday.
Before JT sat down at his desk, he noticed an envelope in his chair. He picked up the envelope and sat down. The flap was unsealed so JT pulled the note out of the envelope and read it:
JT,
I enjoyed every moment we spent together. I need you to know that I’m not willing to let you go. I don’t know what it will take to convince you that we belong together. Does harm have to come to your family? I hope not.
Please make the right decision. We love each other and deserve to be together.
The letter wasn’t signed, but JT thought Vivian had left it on his chair. Honestly, though he couldn’t prove it. Diane also attended Faith Outreach, and if the truth was told, he’d messed around with a few other members. Therefore, some woman was threatening his family and he couldn’t even call the cops on her because he couldn’t prove which one of his former dalliances had sent the letter.
He tore up the note and threw it in his trash. Rubbing his temples, he decided to just forget about it and get to work on his sermon. JT opened his Bible and tried to get back to the business of writing his sermon. Nothing he read stuck to him. He couldn’t find a message to preach. He bent his head and prayed for God to guide him, but God just ignored his pleas.
He started scribbling on his notepad just as Carl and Deke, his faithful deacons, walked into his office. “What’s up, fellows?”
“Nothing much, Pastor. Just trying to finalize some details for Sunday’s TV program,” Carl told him.
The TV program. Now he had something else to worry about. Not only did he have to put a decent message together for his congregation while all this mess was going on in his life, but he also had to be wonderful in front of that camera.
Come to think of it, JT was sure that Jimmy found him because of that rotten TV program. He’d only been on air once, and boom – his past showed up. “Look, fellows, I’m thinking about canceling our airtime. I’m just not sure that we can afford it.”
“We can’t afford to cancel the program, Pastor. We’ve already borrowed over a million dollars from the bank to get the equipment and pay for airtime. If we pull out now, we’ll lose everything.” Deke was the church accountant. He knew to the penny how much had been spent, and on what, but didn’t feel the need to bore them with the weeds.
“That’s right, Pastor,” Carl co-signed. “If you’re not on air selling your tapes – oh, and did I mention that you need to write a couple books?”
“Yes, Carl, you’ve mentioned that,” JT said.
“Well,” Carl continued, “you need to be on air selling that stuff so we can recoup the money and pay off our bank loan.”
“And as you know,” Deke began, “with the current economic crisis America is dealing with, we are not about to get any extra money from the congregation to pay off this loan. We used the church building as collateral, so unless you want to see a foreclosure sign in this front yard, I suggest you get back on TV.”
They were right. He didn’t have time for chaos. As pastor of this church, he had a duty to see it back to financial health. “All right. You’ve made your point. Now let me get back to my sermon, or else no one will want to buy any of my other ministry tapes. So can I get back to my sermon now?”
Carl held up the notepad and files that were in his hand. “We really need to go over this information before Sunday.”
“I trust you and Deke to make the decision. Whatever you want me to do, just tell me and I’ll make it happen.”
“There’s something else, Pastor,” Deke said with an embarrassed look on his face. He handed JT a fax and said, “You’ve been added to the list of pastors under investigation for inappropriate use of donor funds.”
“What?” JT exploded as he stood and slammed his fist on his desk. “Why are they investigating me? The preachers on their first list all had jets. Do I have a jet? Am I flying people from state to state just for the heck of it?”
Preachers all over the nation were well aware that the United States Senate was on a crusade to prove that churches did not need to have tax exempt status. They planned to prove this by highlighting the fabulous lifestyles of pastors and bishops. Members of the senate cited private jets and golden toilets owned by tax exempt pastors with million dollar salaries and deduced that somebody must have their hand in the collection plate.
Deke said, “No, Pastor, you don’t have a jet, but you do own a Bentley and a mansion.”
“I don’t own a mansion.” JT’s face twisted in anger as he exploded. “Compared to some of those other preachers’ homes, I live in a shack.”
Deke hunched his shoulders and lifted his hands. “I didn’t send the letter, Pastor. But we do need to decide how we are going to respond to it.”
“What do they want from us?”
“They want to see all of our financial records for the campaign drive we did to start the TV program. They want to make sure that all those funds went where we said they would be going,” Deke responded
JT walked over to the window and watched the traffic go by. This was it for him. His church members might forgive him for getting a divorce if he played it the right way; but once they heard that he was also being investigated for taking donor money, they would stop paying their tithes and transfer membership quicker than he could say
Jim Baker.
“And what if they didn’t?” Carl asked.
“I don’t know what they will do. The Senate does not have the authority to make us turn over our records. They’re just asking that we comply with their wishes,” Deke said.
JT asked, “What if we don’t comply?”
“Again,” Deke said, “I don’t know what the ramifications to not complying are. If we didn’t spend the money as we said it would be spent, we might lose our tax exempt status, or on a very extreme case, I guess somebody could go to prison.”
And on that happy note, JT turned back around to face his deacons. “I need to be alone for a little while, gentlemen. Let me think this over.”
“All right, Pastor,” Deke said.
“Yeah, we can talk about this stuff later. You worry about your sermon for right now,” Carl added as he and Deke left the office.
JT sat back down at his desk. He looked at his Bible, notepad, files and notes that waited in his in basket for him to review; he was sick of it all. In one swoop of his arm, he knocked everything off his desk, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
The phone rang. JT almost didn’t answer it. He wanted peace and quiet. There were times when he would sit in one spot for hours waiting on an answer from God. Today, JT just wanted to sit in this spot and be numb. But he could sit there until the rapture came and nothing would change for him, so he picked up the phone and said, “This is Pastor JT Thomas.”
“I know what I want.”
“Who is this?” JT asked.
“Don’t play dumb. You know who you’re talking to.”
Rolling his eyes, JT said, “Look, Jimmy, I don’t have time to play games with you today.”
“Oh, you don’t have to play. I’ll just call up your local TV news station and that gospel station you air your little Bible thumping sermons on and tell them everything I know about the illustrious Pastor JT Thomas.”
“What do you want, Jimmy?”
“Naw, that’s all right. You ain’t got to humor me. You’re too big and important to have time for little ol’ three strikes Jimmy. I’ll just find my way down to the news station.”
“Just tell me what you want. You said you know, so tell me.”
“That’s better,” Jimmy told him. “You sound scared enough to do what I tell you.”
“You’re wasting my time; just tell me what you want,” JT demanded.
“Meet me for lunch and I’ll lay my plans out for you. At Major Hoople’s in the Flats. Do you know where that is?”
“At the corner of Riverbed and Columbus Roads?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy responded, then asked, “It’s not too common for your elite taste is it?”
Ignoring the jab, JT said, “I know the place. I can be there in about twenty minutes.”
They hung up and JT grabbed his keys and headed out. When he got to the parking lot and found his car missing, he started to panic until he remembered that he’d driven Cassandra’s car. Opening his cell phone he dialed his wife. “Did you take the car?” he asked as soon as she was on the line.
“Sure did. My bitter mother brought me over there to get it. I have a set of keys to my car too, you know.”
His shoulders slumped. “I told you I would bring the car home in time for Aaron’s appointment.”
“Yeah right, after you drove some of your temple sluts around in my Lexus. That ain’t happening. You can catch a cab until your car gets fixed.”
She hung up and he slammed his phone shut. “Dawg, that woman don’t care nothing about me.” And the knowledge of that stung.
He went back into his office and called a cab. It was twenty minutes before the cab picked him up and dropped him off at his house. He knew he was being petty, but he got in Cassandra’s car and backed out of the driveway anyway.
Cassandra ran out of the house screaming at him. JT rolled down the window and said, “I’ll be back before Aaron’s appointment.” He then pulled off.
Taking the time to go home and get Cassandra’s car cost him thirty minutes. Needless to say, the whole ride over to the restaurant, JT imagined that Jimmy had gotten tired of waiting on him, left the restaurant and was now giving his story to Hard Copy, Star or some other rag dedicated to selling other peoples’ sorrows.
But to his relief or sorrow, Jimmy was still waiting on him. “You’re late,” he snapped as JT approached the booth.
“Relax. I had car problems.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Your car is in the shop.”
JT stopped walking and pointed at him. “It was you.”
“Me? what?”
“You know what – you slashed my tires.”
Jimmy laughed. “Boy, it sounds to me like you don’ made some woman mad. How many of them chicken-heads you sleeping with at that church?”
JT slid into their booth without responding.
“Do you think you could hook me up with one of ‘em?” Jimmy grinned at JT showing off his rotten front tooth.
JT lifted the menu and studied it with interest.
“Come on, man, why you gotta be so stingy. You got that pretty woman at home. Why can’t-”
JT put his menu down. “Leave my wife out of this.”
“Now which wife would that be?”
JT was silent. He really didn’t want to go there. Jimmy knew him from back in the day. He had all the dirt on him. All the dirt that JT prayed would never be unearthed.
“Relax man, your secrets are safe with me,” Jimmy assured him.
“At what price?”
“Don’t we just get straight to the point?” Jimmy asked with a smirk on his face.
The waitress came to the table and took JT’s order. Jimmy already had a turkey sandwich in front of him. “I’ll just have a glass of water for now,” JT said.
“Coming right up,” she told him as she put her pad and pencil back in her apron and walked off.
When she left, Jimmy turned back to JT. “Hey, remember Fat Roy. He was the enforcer at the last house we tried to rob that night.”
“You said you knew what you wanted. Tell me and let me get out of here.”
“You don’t want to know what happened to Fat Roy?” Jimmy asked while picking his teeth.
JT rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Jimmy? I have things to do.”
“All right,” Jimmy said as he leaned back in his seat. “I want the two hundred and fifty thousand you owe me.”
“What? Man, you must be crazy. I don’t owe you two hundred and fifty thousand.”
Jimmy held up his hands as if to say he didn’t want to start a fight. “Look, JT, I know we were supposed to split the money we stole, but the way I see it; you had the benefit of holding onto that money for fifteen years. You could have invested it and tripled our money by now for all I know.”
“Well, I didn’t,” JT said.
The waitress dropped off JT’s water.
When she walked away, Jimmy said, “Too bad for you, because I need my money. I’m trying to get out of this country so I can stay out of prison. So I’m going to need my money.”
“Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I held onto your money for many years. But after Lester got killed, I went back to New Orleans to ask Mona for a divorce.”
Jimmy raised his hand and said, “Spare me the history lesson. I already know that Lester got himself shot up.”
“What I’m trying to tell you,” JT continued, “is that Mona refused to give me a divorce unless I gave her a bunch of money. All I had left was the money I was saving for you. I really needed that divorce, so I gave it to her.”
“What!” JT exploded.
“Calm down, Jimmy. It’s not as if we worked for the money. It was one night of looting in which we made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I gave Mona a hundred and twenty five thousand.”
With nostrils flaring, Jimmy asked, “Do you really expect me to believe that you just handed over
that kind of money to Mona?”
“Believe what you want, but that’s what happened.”
Jimmy’s eyes were filled with hatred as his fist clenched. “I’m not sure you understand me, Pastor. Give me my money or you will not live long enough to regret it.”
JT leaned in closer to Jimmy and said, “It doesn’t matter how much you threaten me, Jimmy. I don’t have the money and I don’t know how you expect me to get it.”
“I don’t care if you take it out of the collection plate. Just get me my money.”
JT stood up. “I can’t do that.”
Jimmy grabbed JT’s arm and jerked him around so that they were face to face when he said, “Play me if you want, JT. But I will bury you.”
JT snatched his arm away from Jimmy and then walked out of the restaurant as all that he had built was crumbling down around him. He had done a lot of wrong in his life, but he hadn’t done what those senators were accusing him of. His house was mortgaged to the hilt and he’d paid for his Bentley with his own money – It might have come from the money that he and Jimmy stole, but it sure didn’t come from his hand being in the church collection plate, and it never would.
He walked out to his wife’s car and sat there for a moment. His head was spinning. Thoughts of running away and starting a new life flooded his mind. He’d gotten away with it for fifteen years, who’s to say he couldn’t just reinvent himself again? He put the key in the ignition, put the car in reverse so he could back out of the parking lot, but someone knocked on his window. He put the car back in park and rolled down the window. A police officer was standing in front of him looking as if he had just caught a criminal red handed. What now? JT thought.
The police officer said, “Out of the car, mister.”
“Excuse me?” JT responded.
“Out of the car,” the police officer said again. “You’re driving a stolen car.”
“No I’m not. This is my wife’s car. Mine is in the shop, so I’m using hers.”
“Let me see your ID sir,” the police officer said.
Former Rain-Forsaken Box Set Page 27
