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  Sheba Wilson had barely gotten those words out of her mouth when Warlene tossed the walker aside and started hollering, “Take me with you, Old Daddy,” right before she climbed up in that casket and tried to close the top over both herself and the deceased.

  Her best friend, Queenie, hopped up and tried to pry the girl out. The baby, Lil’ Old Daddy, started running around the church hollering and crying.

  “Lawd, help my mama cuz my daddy done and got he-self dead.”

  The baby was running so fast the adults couldn’t catch him, so they looked up into the balcony and made a silent appeal to the young folk. Theophilus’s and Essie’s oldest daughter, Sharon, ran track in college. She hurried downstairs and sprinted until she caught up with and got a good grip on Lil’ Old Daddy. With the help of her two siblings, Linda and T. J., Sharon managed to get him over to one of the older church mothers, Miss Mozelle, who took a comb out of her purse and spanked Lil’ Old Daddy’s behind.

  “Isaac David Green, you hush now, and calm youself down,” Miss Mozelle admonished. “Your daddy has gone to be with the Lord, and he can’t hear his registration instructions right for your little antics.”

  Lil’ Old Daddy sniffled, wiped his eyes, and then sat back on Miss Mozelle’s lap. It wasn’t long before he had put his thumb in his mouth and slipped into sleep. That baby was exhausted. Lil’ Old Daddy was so grown, folks sometimes forgot that the baby was only six years old.

  Denzelle and Obadiah were laughing so hard they had to duck down under the pew, as they had as children when they didn’t want to get in trouble. This was some wild mess, and from the looks of things it was about to go up another notch, if that was possible.

  The entire deacon board was now at the casket, trying to get Warlene out of it without tipping it over and spilling the body on the floor. They grabbed her arms and ankles and struggled hard to get her out. But that proved to be very difficult because Warlene was a big girl. And when they started getting tired another church mother, Louise Williams Loomis, came over to that casket and whispered, “If you don’t get your big red behind out of the casket, I’m gonna give you something to really holler about.”

  Warlene calmed down, and the men were able to lift her out of the casket and put her back in her seat. Bert Green, who was a member of another Green family in the congregation, reached down and picked up the walker. He folded it and placed it next to Warlene’s pew.

  She was getting wound up to holler some more when her eyes landed on her estranged sister, Osceola, sitting in a pew with her new husband from North Carolina, Harvey Knowles. Warlene hadn’t seen Osceola since Osceola left St. Louis in 1976 after trying to pretend she was white. And here she was again, sitting up with that mean-looking white man as if she were still white. But before Warlene could open her mouth to tell her sister to take her black, impersonating-a-white-woman self out of the church, one of the North Carolina Greens recognized Harvey Knowles and put the finale on the floor show.

  Sheba Wilson leaned over and whispered to Essie Simmons, “That is a mean white man. Look at him—he is sitting there like he is wishing for the days when being a paddy roller was an honorable profession.”

  Essie peered over at Harvey Knowles and shook her head. Sheba was right. That was one mean white man.

  The North Carolina Green knew that he was at a funeral, and was supposed to act right on behalf of the Green family from Durham. But he couldn’t—not with that man sitting up in here like that. He stood up and shouted out, “Warlene, why is that man, Harvey Knowles, at your husband’s funeral? Don’t you know who and what he is?”

  Harvey Knowles stood up. He was very well dressed in a conservative black pinstriped suit, crisp white shirt, and what a lot of black folks called “the white boy tie”—a pale yellow silk tie with brick-red stripes in it. Harvey was getting a bit nervous. He didn’t know why his new wife, Becky, had insisted on coming all the way out to St. Louis, Missouri, just to attend some old—no, really, really old—black man’s funeral.

  The only reason he’d conceded after that big fight they had was that there was a homeowners’ association in St. Louis’s west county area needing help with collecting its dues. That was worth coming out here for. Harvey Knowles had made a fortune stealing homes from people who got behind on their homeowners’ association dues, and he swooped down on them and foreclosed on the homes for less than what a White Castle hamburger cost, before they had a chance to figure out what had happened to them.

  Harvey was a bully who did not back down easily. He did not appreciate this black man calling him out and embarrassing him. He was going to put him in his place the way any self-respecting white man corrected an ignorant black man who had gotten out of line. It didn’t occur to the man that he was in a black church full of black people. He said, “Now, you see here, buddy. You keep talking like that and something bad is going to happen to you.”

  “Oh… I’ll see here all right,” the North Carolina cousin said. “Church, this is the same man who tried to steal my mama’s house from her for $132.11. And you know what he told her when she tried to get him to work with her? This trash told my mother that something bad was going to happen to her.”

  The church was quiet. They wanted to hear this. The funeral could wait. That white boy had some nerve coming up in their church, and then telling a member of Old Daddy’s family that something bad was going to happen to him. That was horrible. And he didn’t just say it one time, that Harvey had had the nerve to say that mess to the man’s mama, too.

  “My mama lives in Gregson Hills in Durham, North Carolina. She got laid off at the tobacco factory for six months, and got behind on her homeowners’ association dues while she was off work.”

  “I can’t stand that mess,” somebody shouted out. “Those homeowners’ associations can be a ripoff!!! Whoever heard of paying people to live on the street where your own house is? That man is a thief and he steals black people’s houses.”

  “AMEN!!!” came from around the church.

  “Yeah,” someone else proclaimed. “What did the homeowners’ association think they were going to do after they stole the house—throw a mortgage party and pay the bank for it?”

  “THE DEVIL IS A LIAR!” one of the church members, Bertha Green Vicks, shouted out.

  “Amen,” Rev. Wilson said. He had heard about this man when he talked with his friends in the Triangle area of North Carolina. He couldn’t believe that he had set foot in his church.

  “Then, Church, he tried to foreclose on her $68,000 home for $132.11. And he at my cousin’s funeral? NO!!! NO!!! NO!!!”

  The North Carolina cousin ran over to where Osceola/Becky and Harvey Knowles were. He then commenced to beating the slop out of that man until the church was satisfied that Knowles had been dealt a proper hand for his misdeeds. When he started calling for mercy and Jesus, the deacons pulled the cousin up off of him.

  Harvey Knowles let the deacons help him get up. He wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth, ran his fingers through his tangled gray hair, pointed at the North Carolina Green and said, “You are going to be one sorry ni—”

  One of the deacons, Melvin Vicks, Jr., who was also Bertha’s husband, punched Knowles in the head. He said, “Do you and the black woman who got you fooled into thinking she’s white want to get out of this church in one piece? Didn’t you drive up here in a silver Mercedes?”

  Harvey Knowles nodded carefully, while he studied his wife. She looked a whole lot like that black woman who had tried to crawl up in the casket with her dead husband. When he didn’t answer fast enough, Melvin, Jr., said, “I’ll tell you what. We are going to escort you and this thang here out of our church. And if you agree to leave these good people alone, like you should have done in the first place, we’ll walk you and this woman to your car and make sure you get out of here in one piece.”

  “And what if I don’t?” Harvey snapped, still thinking he could do something.

  Melvin, Jr., held up a walkie-talkie.
He said, “This connects me to the security guards outside watching the cars and making sure nobody tries to mess with the cars on the lot. The head of one of St. Louis’s most notorious car-theft rings has two baby mamas living just four blocks away. Now, I saw a little thug eyeing your car, and I had told my main man outside to watch it. But there is no law against me telling him he can take a break when you walk out of this church door. So what’s it gone be?”

  Harvey Knowles conceded. When his wife kept standing there, he snapped, “Becky, if you wanna stay up in here with these ni—people, you will do it at your own risk.”

  Osceola/Becky hurried behind her new husband. She looked back at her sister, envying the kind of love she knew Warlene had shared with David Green. Her eyes filled with tears as she made her way out of the church and away from her folks. Pretending to be white for Harvey was beginning to wear on Osceola’s last nerve. That man wasn’t worth all this pain and suffering, with his mean, conniving, and thieving self.

  The folks in the church were glad for the funeral services to resume. They had known this was going to be the funeral of the year when they first learned that Old Daddy had died. Nothing, however, had prepared them for this. But then again, Old Daddy never did anything without drama and flair. Why expect his home-going celebration to be any different?

  NINE

  The next day Denzelle and Obadiah met with Bishops Murcheson James and Percy Jennings, along with Theophilus Simmons and Eddie Tate, at Freedom Temple. Denzelle was so tired he could hardly see straight. He’d spent all of yesterday at a funeral and was still suffering from jet lag. He was sitting up in Rev. Simmons’s conference room, in a comfortable chair, asleep.

  He woke up to a hard nudge from Obadiah.

  “You’re snoring, man.”

  Denzelle sat up and wiped the drool off his mouth with a handkerchief. Rev. Simmons handed him a cup of coffee.

  “Son, tell us what is going on across the water,” Percy said. He’d been anxious to get Denzelle’s report ever since Denzelle had called him from Virginia.

  Denzelle took a deep breath. This was the first time that his job as a minister and his dedication to fighting “the bad guys” as an FBI agent had bumped heads. He had always thought that all of this would fit together quite nicely… well, except for the times when he had to shoot some folks. But it didn’t. He had been given the task of bringing down what had the makings of a burgeoning drug cartel. And if Denzelle was successful he was going to find, bust, and arrest preachers in his own church. He didn’t like what was going on with Bishop Hemphill. But it hurt that he might have to arrest Rucker, along with several others, and send them straight to jail.

  “Look, Bishops Hemphill, Caruthers, and Babatunde have worked it out so that they could hook up with this family business run by an old man named Uncle Lee Lee out of rural Mozambique. Hemphill is the main person in the deal.”

  “And not Ottah?” Eddie Tate asked. “I’d always thought that he was the head crook across the water. At least that is the impression given by Bishop Abeeku the last time I was in Ghana.”

  “Rev. Tate,” Denzelle began, “Bishop Abeeku has some other issues. He and Bishop Babatunde can’t stand each other and are always finding a way to get one another. Abeeku wants to fully discredit Babatunde (which isn’t hard to do), so that he can be the ‘Head African in Charge’ on the continent. He’s not a crook like Babatunde, but he still bears watching.

  “As for your question about who is running things, it’s Hemphill. The other two are just along for the ride. I was surprised, too. Because the bishop never gave me the impression that he was a businessman. He’s too lazy, too greedy, and too eager for a quick return on the little bit of work he plans on putting out. But lazy, greedy, or not, Rucker is planning on greasing his palms, lining his pocket, padding his accounts, and filling every empty suitcase he can lay hands on with cash.”

  “What about this WP21?” Murcheson James asked.

  Denzelle and Obadiah exchanged looks as if to say, “Dang, they are good.”

  “Bishop,” Denzelle said, “WP21 is made on this farm that is a half a day’s drive from the Seventeenth District’s compound.”

  “Com-what?” Theophilus asked.

  “Compound, Bishop,” Denzelle answered, smiling inside as he felt God’s hand on his heart, causing him to speak in faith, that substance of things hoped for with regard to Theophilus becoming a bishop. Denzelle didn’t know how it was going to happen. He didn’t know how God was going to do it. He just knew what he knew. Theophilus Simmons was going to become one of the other bishops at this conference.

  “What does Rucker need with a compound?”

  “Well, they don’t need a compound, Rev. Simmons,” Denzelle told him. “But they have one. It’s huge and luxurious, and it definitely does not sit well with the other folks living nearby.”

  “So, WP21—what is so special about it?” Bishop James asked again.

  Denzelle wasn’t quite sure how to tell Bishop James about the drug. He looked over at Obadiah for some help. But all Obadiah did was start laughing.

  Denzelle couldn’t believe Obadiah would clown him like that. He said, “Bishop, I really don’t know how to put this delicately, but WP21 does things to people, well, more like men, after they take the drug.”

  “What kind of things?” Eddie asked. He was very curious about something that had the big and bad Denzelle Flowers so uncomfortable he was practically blushing.

  “Special things,” was all Denzelle said.

  “Spell it out, son,” Murcheson said. “What is so special about this stuff?”

  “Bishop, it makes a man feel and act real special—so special that he can keep on acting special like that for a couple of days.”

  Theophilus and Eddie started laughing. They slapped palms and said, “Now that’s special, mighty special indeed.”

  “Is it a synthetic drug?” Percy Jennings queried.

  “All-natural as far as I could tell.”

  “What do you mean, ‘as far as I could tell,’ Rev. Special Agent Flowers?” Eddie Tate asked, now cracking up. He knew Denzelle had tried some of that stuff because he knew Denzelle.

  By now Obadiah was hollering with laughter.

  “It works better than anything you can imagine,” Denzelle answered in his best FBI voice. “It is made from some kind of combination of ground-up watermelon powders—from several different kinds of watermelon. It’s strong and potent, and I think there is some other ingredient in it.

  “But as great as this stuff is, it has some awful side effects. You crash horribly, and you feel like you have the worst case of the flu when the stuff starts to clear your system. But the curious thing is that I noticed that the family who makes this stuff, along with the Africans in the community they did business with, didn’t seem to experience any side effects. And they didn’t take it all the time, either. But for folks like me, the effects were pretty bad, it is highly addictive, and you started craving it real fast. Bishop Hemphill was taking it every day when I left.”

  “So,” Theophilus said, “what you are telling us is that one of our bishops is an aspiring drug dealer, who has opted to use his own product like the greedy knucklehead that Rucker Hemphill is. And the meanest bishop in the denomination, Ottah Babatunde, is in cahoots with him and the son of the late Otis Caruthers.”

  “Yep… pretty much, Rev. Simmons,” Denzelle answered.

  Theophilus sighed and rubbed his temples. He had thought it was bad back in 1963 with the funeral home brothel. But this stuff was something. He said, “The denomination can’t survive this if it busts loose at the Triennial Conference. This kind of scandal could take us out.”

  “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,
and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled,” Percy spoke evenly.

  The room was quiet for a moment as they all meditated on 2 Corinthians 10:3–6.

  “Percy, man,” Murcheson said, “when you put it that way, it’s pretty clear to me that this isn’t simply another scandal just waiting to take a big bite out of the church. Looks like we are facing some serious spiritual warfare disguised as a scandal, and waiting to annihilate the souls of those who serve and worship in this church. And what better way for the enemy to attack the church than to try and infiltrate it from the top down with something that is seemingly harmless and ‘natural’ like this WP21?”

  Murcheson rocked back in his chair for a few seconds, quiet and thoughtful about what God wanted him to say next. He sat up straight and said, “Preachers, I want you to stand up and pray with me because we are getting ready to go to war.”

  They all stood, formed a small circle, and grasped each other’s hands with their heads bowed as Bishop James led them in this prayer.

  “Father, we thank You for revelation knowledge. We humbly submit ourselves to doing Your will, and we ask that You show us how You want us to proceed in this battle. Lord, put a lamplight to our feet, to guide us. Father, keep us safe beneath the shadow of Your wings. And Lord, be with us as we put on the full armor of God: the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, gird our loins with truth, shod our feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, we hold up the shield of faith, and we wield the sword of the spirit, which is Your Word. Lord, we bless Your Holy Name, and we thank You for all that You do, have done, and will do for us. We claim the victory over this, for we are more than conquerors. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  “Amen,” was all the rest of them said.

  “Now,” Murcheson said, still on fire on the inside from the anointing from Heaven that had come down on him when he was praying, “the first order of the day is this. We need our own candidate running in this race for bishop. There are now three seats up for grabs, and we are going to get one. I know that our adversaries will come up with one person—just don’t know who he is right now. And there is one seat that could go either way. But that third seat belongs to us.”