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  “But sir, what about the innocent people who will take that drug?”

  “What about them?” Greg asked Denzelle coldly. “I hope that some of the preachers in your denomination, and most of those church folk, have sense enough to bypass something like this.”

  “But…”

  Greg raised his hands. He’d heard enough.

  “Agent Flowers, you are a preacher. How about you getting on your knees and asking the Lord to protect those folks while we do our jobs? Isn’t God big and strong enough to do that?”

  Denzelle nodded. God was all that and more.

  “I had hoped that would be your answer,” Greg said. “You know I’m not much on church because I just don’t see why I need to be there if I am a decent person. And to be honest, I want to see if God can do all that you’ve been telling me He can do at this conference.”

  “Sir, we shouldn’t put the Lord to a foolish test.”

  “Denzelle, I’m not putting the Lord to a test, I’m asking Him to put the rubber to the road and let me see Him work. That’s all—I just want to witness this mysterious move of God, the hand of God, in my work.”

  Denzelle didn’t know what to say. Gregory Williams was one of those smart brothers who loved to preach on some weak form of humanism. And now he wanted to know if God was as big and real and powerful as church people told him He was. He said, “Sir, the Lord just laid this on my heart. He said to tell you that you will see Him work. And it will be in the land of the living.”

  Greg frowned as he tried to grapple with what Denzelle had just said. Working with an agent who was also an ordained preacher was an experience like no other. You never knew when the brother would be a preacher, a cop, or a little bit of both.

  “Sir, I’ll call you as soon as I have a chance to meet with my church people,” Denzelle told him and left. He had another plane to catch to St. Louis, so that he could talk to his field officers on the church side of this sting. Only these superiors didn’t wear bulletproof vests, they were clothed in the full armor of God.

  But that debriefing would have to wait. As soon as Denzelle got off the plane at Lambert Airport, he saw Obadiah was waiting for him at baggage claim looking upset. He said, “Everything all right, Obie, man? You look like somebody just died.”

  “Somebody did just die,” Obadiah told him, with tears in his eyes.

  Denzelle searched the carousel for his bags. None had showed up yet.

  “Bishop…”

  Obadiah shook his head.

  “No, none of our own people. It’s Mr. David Green.”

  Denzelle looked puzzled. He could not place Mr. David Green, even though he knew he should have been able to if Obadiah was at the airport waiting for him and upset.

  “Old Daddy,” Obadiah told him.

  “Old Daddy, Old Daddy?” Denzelle asked in disbelief. “The president of the Mellow Slick Cougar’s Club, Old Daddy?” he asked a second time, trying to digest what he’d just been told.

  Obadiah nodded and wiped at his eye. He loved Old Daddy. He had learned a lot talking to him. And even though Old Daddy was over a hundred years old, he was still a top-notch player and full of vitality and life. Obadiah wondered if this is what the “back in the Bible day folk” felt when people like Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and David died.

  Old Daddy, or David Green, was the ultimate North St. Louis player. At a hundred plus he was still spry and fashionably dressed in the latest men’s apparel. There was never a day when David Green wasn’t dressed in a suit—three-piece, leisure, two-piece ensembles in peach, mint, purple, turquoise, yellow, and the definitive player color, red. He had a pair of gators to match every suit, and enough hats to start a millinery shop.

  He had been healthy and active, and a hard worker in the men’s ministry program at his church home, Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church, where Rev. George Wilson, Rev. Theophilus Simmons’s good friend, was the senior pastor. And with the exception of cataract surgery four years ago, Old Daddy rarely had so much as a cold. But one day he started running a fever, passed out, and never regained consciousness.

  Old Daddy’s wife, Warlene Green, was so distraught she had to be hospitalized. And her best friend, Queenie Roper, had to take charge of her young son, Isaac David Green, or “Lil’ Old Daddy,” as he was so affectionately known at church. It always shocked people to learn first of all that Warlene, who was well into her fifties, had given birth to a healthy baby boy, and two that the baby’s daddy was really Old Daddy. There was no hanky-panky going on behind Old Daddy’s back. Because as Warlene proudly told any woman up in her business, or any man trying to hit on her, Old Daddy took care of home real good.

  Plenty of times folks still questioned Old Daddy’s ability to pull that off—not to mention how Warlene squeezed back the effects of the change just long enough to get that baby. But the older Lil’ Old Daddy became, looking more and more like his dad, the more folks shut up and left that matter alone.

  Even though the folks at Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church loved them dearly, they still sneaked and called Old Daddy and Warlene “Abraham and Sarah” behind their backs. And those two didn’t help matters when they announced that the baby’s real name was Isaac. And if that was not enough, Isaac was old-acting. Plus, they dressed him like a little man in suits, baby gators, and little hats just like his daddy. That baby looked old, even though he was technically only six. One of Gethsemane’s older members, Louise Williams Loomis, would look at little Isaac and say, “Didn’t they know that two old people didn’t need to have a baby because the baby would come out looking like he old.”

  Denzelle’s bags finally popped up on the luggage carousel. He grabbed one, while Obadiah hurried to get the other one.

  “What is in this bag, D?” Obadiah asked, massaging his shoulder because it was so heavy.

  “Heat,” Denzelle answered him evenly.

  “They let you do that, man?”

  Denzelle didn’t answer. He just reached inside his denim jacket and flashed his badge.

  “That thing definitely has its privileges,” Obadiah said, and hurried them out of the terminal.

  “You parked in the wrong place, Obie?”

  “No, but we have to get going. The funeral is in an hour.”

  “Whose funeral?” Denzelle asked.

  “Old Daddy’s.”

  “But, Obie, I thought you said he just died.”

  “Denzelle, he didn’t just die. He died five days ago. And the funeral is today.”

  They made it to the church just minutes before the family finished lining up to march in. They hurried to a seat with the other pastors. Denzelle wished he had had time to change clothes. Everybody had on a collar and robe, and Denzelle was dressed in a black denim suit and a purple-black-and-mint-green silk shirt. He felt very underdressed, even though several women in the congregation smiled when this deep caramel brother walked down the aisle with that high, round behind wearing the daylights out of those black jeans.

  Denzelle felt better when he caught a glance from a sister with some DDs. He flashed her that winning smile that made his large, round eyes light up. Rev. Flowers was good-looking, he could wear some clothes, and he had something about him that the ladies couldn’t resist.

  Based on the way the Green family was standing and holding on to each other while they waited for the funeral director to tell them who went where, and when they were to start down the aisle in the processional, Denzelle and Obadiah knew this was going to be a long and emotionally charged funeral. It also felt a bit like old home week for the two young pastors, with so many folks from North Carolina standing outside with the family.

  Folks had forgotten that David Green (aka Old Daddy) had come to St. Louis from Durham County, North Carolina, and was part of an extensive family of Greens back in Durham. Joseph Green and Lamont Green’s father were David’s nephews. Cousin Buddy Green was Old Daddy’s great-grandson. Cousin Buddy was different, slower, bigger, taller, and more special tha
n the rest of his kinfolk. And the fact that he was at the funeral wearing a Carolina Blue football helmet didn’t help to make him appear any less different from the other Greens.

  “This is going to be one long and sad funeral,” Obadiah whispered.

  Denzelle nodded and said, “I was just thinking the exact same thing. Check that out.”

  Obadiah’s eyes followed Denzelle’s gaze all the way over to where Old Daddy’s son, Lil’ Old Daddy, was standing with his mother, Warlene, and her best friend, Queenie.

  “Denzelle, man, why did that woman have to dress the baby like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that,” Obadiah whispered too loudly, drawing attention from his wife, Lena, who cut her eyes at him. She knew they were over there talking about that baby in his little funeral suit. He tried to sneak and point, but lowered his fingers when he saw Gethsemane’s First Lady, Mrs. Sheba Wilson, raising an eyebrow at him. He lowered his finger and was about to mouth a “Sorry, Miss Sheba,” but stopped when he saw her trying not to laugh.

  Denzelle raised up in his seat just enough to see Lil’ Old Daddy without drawing too much attention to himself. He didn’t know what it was with black folk and funerals. They couldn’t just put the deceased to rest. They had to put on a major production. And today’s ceremony qualified for a Tony Award nomination.

  That baby was wearing a little bitty Old Daddy suit. It was a lime-green pinstriped suit with a long coat that came to the knees, with a white shirt and black tie. The baby even had on a pair of black gators trimmed with lime-green piping, and was holding a little black fedora with a lime-green band in his hands, as if he were sixty-five years old.

  Denzelle closed his eyes to try not to laugh. The funeral had just started, and he honestly didn’t know how he was going to get through it in one piece. A church laugh that had no business coming out was the worst thing in the world. It was like having a bad case of gas in a room full of other people—maybe worse.

  Lil’ Old Daddy patted his mother’s hand. Warlene smiled down at her son, and then took her walker and positioned it for walking down the aisle.

  “I didn’t know that Miss Warlene was on a walker, Obadiah. Has she been sick or something?”

  “She doesn’t need a walker, man. I think the funeral home people got it for her so she wouldn’t fall out during the processional.”

  Warlene pushed the walker forward several inches. She leaned down on the walker and said, “Laaaawwwwdddd, my man gone. He dead as a doorknob, laaawwwddd. Help me, Jesus. Jeeeeeezzzaaaaaazzzzzz!!!!!”

  The senior pastor, Rev. George Wilson, sat up in the pulpit wondering how he was going to get through this funeral without, first, slapping some black people, and, two, laughing his head off. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Old Daddy’s family—to the contrary. He loved them a lot. But if they weren’t some overly dramatic folks, he didn’t know who was. Plus, he had told Warlene, when he counseled her and Mr. Green before they married, that her husband was way up in years. He advised her to enjoy the time the Lord had given them together because it could be much shorter than she wanted it to be.

  Warlene had gotten mad at her pastor for telling her that. That day she hopped up and said, “Why you got to spread the ugly talk over me and my man. I just cancel those words out, Rev. Wilson. I cancel those words out. You trying to kill Old Daddy and make me a lonely widow before my time.”

  George stared at Warlene in amazement for a minute. He wondered if the words “your man is almost older than a century” meant anything to her. He was at a loss as to how to tell the girl that a man Old Daddy’s age more than likely had only a good ten to fifteen years left. But God was good, and tempered that desire to tell Warlene that to her face.

  George discovered in that moment that with the right person, there really was a lot to be said for wisdom and age. Old Daddy, who hated to see his fiancée so upset over the inevitable, had patted Warlene’s knee and said, “Baby, you know I don’t have a heap of time ahead of me. That’s why we are back in church and living right, just so I can hear the Lord say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’ when I meet Him face-to-face in glory. But before it’s time for me to tug at the pearly gates, I want to enjoy these last good days with a good woman. Now, you get your little young self together and apologize to Rev. Wilson. ’Cause he’s only trying to do right by you, Warlene.”

  Warlene teared up at just the mere thought of Old Daddy dying and said, “I’m sorry, Rev. Wilson. I know you doing what the Lord leads you to do. And if every pastor did that, we’d have a whole lotta more saved, sanctified, and Holy Ghost–filled people in our churches.”

  Now here he was, sitting up in this pulpit getting ready to watch the “Black People’s Funeral Show.” George wished he could have sat with his wife, their children, and their friends. A brother could use some backup and somebody to pass notes to during moments like this.

  Warlene had a few near misses for falling out. It was a good thing that she had that walker—or else it would have taken them half an hour to get in, rather than the fifteen minutes they took to take their assigned seats. When everybody was seated the funeral home folk rolled Old Daddy’s casket down the aisle.

  It was a magnificent casket. George Wilson had seen many a casket in his day, but he’d never seen one like this.

  First, the casket was painted a sparkling lime-green. Even the metal casket rack was lime-green. Then it was trimmed in gold. But as if that weren’t enough, the casket had pictures of Old Daddy painted on both sides. Instead of flowers on the top, they had anchored one of Old Daddy’s black silk top hats, with a lime-green brocade band around the crown.

  Denzelle poked Obadiah. He said, “Man, what…”

  They both stopped when Lena leaned forward to give them a look.

  The men’s chorus, The King’s Men, was the choir of choice. They walked in behind the casket, humming “At the Cross,” while Gethsemane’s premier soloist and newest gospel recording star, Sister Hershey Jones, sang the solo. It was Old Daddy’s favorite song and Hershey was putting a serious hurting on the number when she sang:

  “Alas! And did my Savior bleed,/And did my Sovereign die?/Would He devote that sacred head for sinners such as I?/At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,/And the burden of my heart rolled away,/It was there by faith I received my sight,/And now I am happy all the day.”

  The King’s Men went and took their place in the choir loft. In honor of the memory of Old Daddy they were wearing lime-green suits with black trimming on the lapels, the buttonholes, the pockets, and the cuffs, with black shirts, and black gators trimmed with the same lime piping as on Lil’ Old Daddy’s shoes. The members of The King’s Men had special-ordered those outfits through Old Daddy’s favorite store, Londell’s Men Shop.

  When everybody was in place Hershey sang the last verse of the song and went and sat down while The King’s Men remained standing. The the organist lit that Hammond organ up, and the pianist, bass guitarist, lead guitar, and drummer followed suit. They jumped the beat up from the slower gospel rendition given by Hershey Jones to a funky blues beat that had folks up on their feet clapping and swaying to The King’s Men good singing. The music and men’s chorus were sounding so good that some people almost forgot they were at a funeral. But they were quickly reminded where they were when the pallbearers placed the casket at the front of the church, right below the pulpit area.

  The funeral director took a deep breath and prayed before she and her assistants removed the top hat and proceeded to open that casket. She had begged Mrs. Green to leave the casket closed until it was time to view the body. But all Warlene said was, “What y’all trying to do, make it so that Old Daddy can’t be a part of his own funeral?”

  The funeral director had simply raised her hands in concession to the request and said, “We will abide by your wishes, Mrs. Green.”

  But the funeral director knew it was a mistake. She knew it the moment her assistant recom
mended that they rent Warlene Green a walker from the medical supply store near Barnes Hospital because the woman kept falling out when they were trying to make the funeral arrangements.

  While the director had hoped for the best, she knew Warlene would not be able to stand looking at her deceased husband throughout the entire service. As soon as Old Daddy’s remains were in full view, Warlene stood up with the support of the walker and made her way to the casket while The King’s Men were putting the finishing touches on their song. She stared at her man’s body, all decked out in his favorite outfit—a lime-green three-piece suit with matching lime-green shirt, tie, and hat. A few folks had inquired about the hat. But all Warlene had said was, “Has you negroes ever seen my Old Daddy walking around with his head uncovered? Do y’all think I’ll be so ghetto that I’ll send my man to meet Jesus bareheaded?”

  Nobody said a word because nobody had ever seen Old Daddy without a hat, and they were not about to try and see something like that now.

  At first, Warlene just looked at Old Daddy with tears streaming down her cheeks. She had loved that man. He may have been old, but he was the best man she’d ever had in her life. And Warlene Green had had her share of men—but none of those jokers could hold a dim candle to Old Daddy.

  She shook her head and started shaking and sobbing. Sheba took a deep breath and hoped for the best in vain. When it looked as if things were getting ready to get kind of wild, she leaned over and whispered to her friend, Essie Simmons, “Girl, you better fasten your seat belt.”