Paper Gods

by Goldie Taylor

  Victoria surveyed the extravagant mausoleums and sculptures that harkened back to a time when wealth and race followed one to the grave.

  The mourners were surrounded by more than seventy thousand graves, including those of Confederate soldiers. Some were memorialized by towering, ornate sculptures and others marked by a simple marble plate. Over the years, some people reported hearing a man’s ghostly voice calling the names of those who died in battle. Victoria could hear nothing but the whispering winds.

  She had come here in middle school on a field trip. In her second year at Harvard Law, she buried her father no more than a few paces away from where she now stood. Victoria returned twice more as a member of the Georgia state legislature and a third time as mayor. She never forgot the story of the first documented African American burial since she heard it in seventh grade. Each time she came, including this day, Victoria visited the boy known only as “John.”

  In 1853, the fourteen-year-old Negro boy was laid to rest in what was then called Slave Square. Victoria found his master’s name, William Hearing, listed on the official paperwork. Victoria and John shared the same birth date, according to the document, and were born 127 years apart—he on March 23, 1839. Victoria was born on the same day in 1966.

  “Over twelve thousand black people are buried on the grounds,” the cemetery director once told her. “Most of them were children. They were interred in the back section next to Potter’s Field.”

  Some of the remains were unearthed, years after they were first laid to rest, and reinterred in the area called the “colored pauper grounds,” to make room for wealthy white families and war veterans, the director went on explaining. He’d pointed to the “whites only” section, which left the then–state senator feeling like a “colored gal.”

  “Only two bodies, those of Georgia Harris and Catherine Holmes, remain buried over there.”

  Securing a plot for Chip so close to their father took some political wrangling. It required getting special permission and buying out the family that owned the adjoining plots, as there was little ground available for new interments. Westview, a historic interdenominational cemetery in southwest Atlanta that was home to both “the famous and the ordinary,” was Rosetta’s second choice. Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler and iconic mayor William Hartsfield, for whom the airport is named, were buried there. But Victoria vowed that, no matter the price or political tensions, her brother would be buried in Oakland alongside their father.

  The prayers were brief. The eulogy was no more than twenty minutes in length. Chip, who had known no lasting peace in his living days, wouldn’t have wanted to be prayed over for too long, Melham said.

  Some of the womenfolk, toting pillbox purses and showy hats, fanned themselves with their summer church gloves. There were strong-faced men, dressed in obligatory black suits and tightly knotted ties. Victoria, seated between her daughters, cradled a bouquet of long-stemmed white lilies, and her mother held a small shovel across her lap.

  Pastor Melham read a closing scripture and recited the same benediction he always said in church, and it got the same hearty amen it always got. When the final prayer was complete, Victoria stepped forward and placed the bundle of flowers onto the coffin lid. Rosetta then got up and walked to the head of the casket.

  “You can let it down now,” the old woman told the funeral director.

  Together, the mourners watched as suited men from Murray Brothers Funeral Home lowered the beautiful box into the ground. When the coffin reached the bottom, Rosetta said, “Hand me that shovel, young man.”

  She gripped the handle with both hands and began to fill the hole. Her brother, Tommie Byrd, tried to stop her, but Rosetta went on.

  “I brought my child into this world. I will see him out of it.”

  She dug into the pile of dirt and lifted the first pitch into the grave as a pair of doves were released. Women began to shriek and wail. A man shouted, “Glory, glory!”

  Not even Steve Weisenhunt, Chip’s pickup basketball teammate, could keep his eyes dry. Scooter Taylor and Kevin Harvey locked arms with the other pallbearers and began to pray. Katherine “Kick” Hartsfield, Rosetta’s elder and only surviving sister, slumped over in her chair, her arms thrashing back and forth. “Holy Father!” she shouted again and again.

  Rosetta kept working, the sweat pooling on her brow. She pulled off her hat and looked up to the sky. “I will keep nothing from my Father,” she said to the heavens. “I surrender unto God all that He has given unto me.”

  Rosetta may as well have been preaching rather than shoveling, the way the people carried on under that tent. When he’d seen enough and began to worry about Rosetta’s health, Pastor Melham stepped forward and gently took hold of her hands.

  “Your work is done, Mother Dobbs,” he said with assurance. “Prentiss is at rest in the arms of our Heavenly Father. There will be just one funeral today.”

  Rosetta caught her breath, nodded, and stepped away from the pit. One by one, each member of the family took turns praying over the grave and exited the site. As they turned to walk away, Pastor Melham beckoned Victoria and Marsh to wait.

  “A word?” Melham said, waving them back to their seats.

  “I need to spend some time with you,” he said in a low, serious voice. “The devil knows where to cast his temptations. Don’t let this earthly world take away from you what Christ Himself has anointed and ordained.”

  Marsh shook his head in agreement, silently acknowledging his infidelities. Victoria stared off into the distance.

  “Father, forgive them,” Victoria said to the heavens. “For they know not what they do.”

  The pastor was immediately perplexed. Melham may have been confused by the mayor’s reference to the crucifixion, but Marsh understood his wife perfectly and braced himself.

  Victoria rarely quoted Scripture. But when she did, it meant she was readying for a fight.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Hampton watched live coverage of the funeral procession on the newsroom monitors. The caravan of cars, led by four freshly polished limousines, moved eastward over Memorial Drive, and then made its way silently and alone northbound along the downtown connector. State patrol vehicles secured the on-ramps, holding midday traffic at bay as the mourners made their passage. All four local news choppers captured the entire scene.

  The final destination, an anchor said solemnly, was the mayor’s home in Buckhead for a private repast.

  Hunched over his cubicle, a dozen miles away, Hampton thumbed through the Hawkins Amendment again. He hadn’t yet told Tucker about the congressman’s plans. The resulting public contracts for new highways, rapid rail expansion, and other developments from the initial legislation would have been worth billions, and Mayor Dobbs would have no say in who won the contracts. The way Hampton saw it, one thing was clear: The language in the amendment was designed to strip contracting powers from the mayor’s office and hand them to a bipartisan community-led commission. If somebody was trying to buy public bids through her office, the legislation was cutting them off, too.

  Hampton could find no direct connection to the Delacourtes or Loudermilk, save for the Ball Ground house and the younger Delacourte’s small construction company. But if Valerie Norbreck-Haynes was right, there was a reason they spilled so much cash on Hawkins. Now Hawkins was dead and his amendment was dead too. The mayor’s brother, who once led the city’s contract procurement office, had just been carted across town in the back of a hearse.

  The measure would’ve almost certainly drawn the support of the Republican-controlled House Committee on Transportation. The Hawkins Amendment would’ve sailed through both the House and Senate chambers with ease, and there was no way the president could refuse to sign it. All of that left Mayor Dobbs, and anybody on her side, hanging out with the wash.

  Hawkins was locking them all out. But why?

  Dobbs and Hawkins were still tight as twine when the congressman was killed, though Hampton now wondered if t
heir accord was more like a leash. The congressman’s decades-long alliance with the League, dating back to the mid-’70s, had gone up in flames, and Hampton now wondered who else got burned. He studied a stack of existing and pending city contracts, but found nothing.

  The altercation outside the mayor’s Buckhead mansion was something altogether different. Back-fence talk chalked it up to the good doctor’s philandering with a woman named Samantha Geidner. Hampton rang her phone a dozen or more times, though she never once picked up. According to a publicist out of New York, Geidner was on a planned vacation somewhere in the Caribbean and would have no comment on the matter.

  Hampton understood the mayor’s temper better than anybody. He’d heard about the incident out at the Buckhead Diner and now wondered if Virgil Loudermilk was behind the mysterious package that was supposedly delivered to her house. If true, that meant Loudermilk and Dobbs were in the midst of an all-out war. Hampton’s gut told him the special election was simply a proxy battle. There wasn’t a chance he’d get to ask Dobbs about it. Munching on a bag of Honey BBQ Fritos, Hampton could only imagine the mayor’s response if he asked for a one-on-one interview.

  Kathy Franco, the senior crime beat reporter, wandered in and plopped down in a chair beside him. “I’ve got an early birthday gift for you,” she said, reclining in the ergonomic swivel chair.

  “You know how much I adore surprises. Wha’cha got?”

  Franco slid a slim stack of paperwork onto his desk. “Medical records from Northside Hospital,” she said. “Happy birthday!”

  Hampton scanned the top sheet. “How’d you get your hands on this?”

  “Magic, my friend.”

  The top page was an emergency room discharge sheet for Marshall L. Overstreet. The record said an attending physician patched him up with four stitches and an allotment of painkillers and muscle relaxers. The CT scan was negative, according to the notes, but the patient had a number of abrasions about the head, neck, and forearms. The document was signed and dated the day after the so-called boating accident.

  “From the looks of things, she knocked the hell out him, and I think I know why,” Hampton said.

  “She’s got the makings of a real prizefighter,” Franco said. “If Mayor Dobbs doesn’t win this election, she could jump on Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team.”

  “That’s exactly why she’s going to win this thing. It’ll take more than a slick preacher to bring her down,” Hampton said. “Her bite is bigger than her bark.”

  “Seems like she did everything except bite him. Says here that he had bruised ribs, multiple contusions, and a fractured thumb.”

  “Can you write this up?” Hampton said.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “For starters, she might burn my house. But I’m working on something big, and my plate is full.”

  “Bigger that this? Mayor Dobbs couldn’t possibly hate you any more than she already does.”

  Hampton’s desk phone was ringing. “Indeed, and I’m about to test that theory,” he told Franco, picking up the receiver. “A visitor for me? Yeah, who is it?”

  He paused, turned toward Franco, and said, “Hey, I’ve got to run. I’ll shoot you some stuff on that domestic incident in a bit. I have a 911 call from a neighbor. Already transcribed for your reading pleasure. There’s something about a man getting blasted with a pressure washer.”

  “The kind they use to clean building exteriors?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. Word on the street is an unmarked package arrived at the mayor’s house, containing proof that her husband was cheating on her,” Hampton said. “I think that’s what set her off.”

  “Any idea who sent the package?”

  Hampton ran an imaginary zipper across his lips. Franco grinned and scooted away.

  “Don’t send her up. I’m coming down,” he told the security guard over the phone, “and make sure she doesn’t leave.”

  Minutes later, Hampton hobbled into the lobby using forearm crutches. He barely recognized Chanel at first. She wasn’t wearing her usual getup, and there wasn’t a stitch of makeup.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” she said in a low voice. “Privately.”

  “Sure, we can do that,” Hampton said. “What brings you here?”

  “I ain’t have no place else to go.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We need to talk,” she said, fidgeting, “in private. Is there somewhere we can go?”

  He gazed into her eyes. She’d been crying. Hampton looked around and said, “Okay, I’ll sign you in.”

  “Don’t put my name on the books.”

  “Um, okay, sure. Follow me.”

  He’d never known Chanel to hold her tongue, but on the elevator ride she was quieter than a Tibetan monk on a sojourn to Nepal. Hampton found an empty, darkened conference room on the sixth floor, out of sight and earshot of the newsroom two floors below. Chanel trailed him inside. Hampton hit on the light switch and pulled the blinds.

  He waited patiently as she took a seat across from him.

  “Listen, I didn’t tell you everything,” Chanel began. “I couldn’t. I need you to understand that.”

  “I’ve always known that,” Hampton said. “So, where do we start?”

  Chanel opened her purse and placed a piece of shiny construction paper on the table.

  “What is this?” Hampton said, picking it up. “Origami?”

  “It’s a message.”

  “A message?”

  “An omen. Do you have a tape recorder around here?”

  “Sure, do I need one?”

  Hampton placed his smartphone on the table and clicked on a voice recording app. Chanel stared down at the device and said, “I might not live long enough to repeat myself.”

  Four hours and three cups of coffee later, Hampton and Chanel pulled up alongside the Amtrak station on Peachtree Street. He handed Chanel a sack lunch and a one-way ticket to Michigan under the name “Tracy Cantrell.” Over his father’s objections, his mother, Florence, agreed to open her home to “Tracy.”

  “They’re good people. My mother is, anyway,” Hampton said. “She’ll take good care of you. My mama will see to it that you get three square meals every day, and you’ll have a roof over your head while we sort this out. I hope you don’t mind sleeping in my old room.”

  “Thank you,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  “We should call the police. I’ve got a couple of friends at the GBI.”

  For the third or fourth time that day, Chanel said, “No.”

  “If even half of what you told me is true,” Hampton said, “somebody belongs in prison.”

  “If I thought I could trust the police, I would’ve gone to them a long time ago, and maybe Ezra would still be alive.”

  You don’t know what kinna people you messing with.

  Hampton suddenly didn’t like sitting out on Peachtree Street. He wheeled around to Deering Avenue, parked along the curb, and watched a wave of people exit the train station in his rearview mirror.

  “Did he tell you anything about who he thought was after him?”

  “Never would say,” Chanel said. “He just kept on talking about that amendment and all that money up for grabs. Ezra thought if he could get it passed, then that would save his life.”

  “And he said that to you?”

  “Not in so many words, but, yeah, he was scared.”

  “Why didn’t he just vote for the initial bill?”

  “He said his heart wouldn’t let him. Said the people elected him to do a job, and as long as he was breathing good air, he wouldn’t quit doing it.”

  “Why do you think these people want to kill you?”

  “Because they know what I know. They sent him that same red bird before they had him killed.”

  “Who is ‘they’? Who sent it to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or you won’t say?”

  Chanel spoke in even
tones now. Hampton studied her face. She told him how afraid she’d been when she heard about Chip Dobbs and the bombing at the hotel. “He wasn’t shit in high school, but don’t nobody deserve to get burnt up like that.”

  “They arrested a suspect, right?”

  “They got Rochelle Charles’s boy on lockdown, but he don’t know nothing about making no damn bombs. His uncles sure as hell do, though.”

  “You know them?”

  “Rochelle went to school with us too. And so did her older brothers Riley and Dickey.”

  “Richard Lester?”

  “That’s him. He goes by Dickey,” Chanel said. “Him and Vicki used to fuck around in high school. Had everybody thinking she was a virgin, but I knew better than that. They say Chip was helping Dickey run money through his nightclubs and turned state’s evidence to keep his own ass out of jail. They say that’s what got him killed, but I don’t believe that’s all to it. They could’ve just clipped his ass coming out of Phipps Plaza.”

  “What is it that you do believe?”

  “I think the same people that killed Ezra got to Chip. That’s what they’re saying out in the street, anyway. This is big, even for Dickey. If he in it, he ain’t in it by his damn self. Ezra kept his ass out of jail more than once.”

  “And you think the car bomb is somehow connected to the church shooting?”

  “The only thing tying them together is Vickie and them city contracts,” she went on saying. “If you don’t hear from me, promise you’ll take that envelope I gave you straight to her.”

  “Why Dobbs?”

  “She might be the only person who can save my life.”

  Hampton had more questions, but the look in Chanel’s eyes said she was done talking. He nodded, reached into the backseat, and handed her a prepaid cell phone and an overnight bag stuffed with new clothes.