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  “Bishop,” Obadiah asked, “why not go after two seats instead of one?”

  “That is a very good question, son. And while I would love to do that, we have to be prudent. First, the conference is less than a year away. Most of the candidates have been planning this at least two years in advance. Secondly, this will take a powerful campaign team, and money—a lot of money.”

  “How much?” Denzelle asked. He knew folks spent a lot of money running for bishop, but he had never thought about how much it would take to run a good, strong, and clean campaign by the right folk.

  “About eighty-five grand,” Percy told them matter-of-factly.

  “Eighty-five thousand dollars, Bishop?” Obadiah asked, hardly believing what he was hearing. “Why?”

  “Well, first off, Obadiah, eighty-five grand is considered to be a very small budget. Most folk, even the more conservative spenders, will shell out close to $150,000.”

  “That’s a whole lot of money, Bishop.”

  “I agree, Obadiah. But the money is needed for advertisement, gifts to help out struggling churches, gifts to the bishops and presiding elders, helping out the campaign team, and a bunch of stuff.”

  “Like the golf carts that boy who is over the Twelfth District, Bishop Conrad Brown, had all over the place when he ran for bishop. That wasn’t cheap,” Murcheson said.

  “Neither were the limos he sent to the airport to pick up all of the bishops and bring them to the hotels,” Percy added, thankful that he had run his campaign during a time when all of that was unnecessary.

  “So who are you considering sponsoring at this late date?” Eddie asked.

  “You,” Murcheson told him evenly. “I thought we made that clear to you when we first gave you this news.”

  “I don’t want to run for bishop. I’m happy where I am.”

  “Well, Pastor, you are running. God put your name on my heart, and if you don’t like His choice, then I suggest you go in your prayer closet and take up this matter with the Lord.”

  Eddie didn’t say another word. Murcheson did not tell you that God had laid something on his heart unless God had laid something on his heart. He looked up and mumbled, “Why me?” And then he got very repentant when he felt a stirring in his heart right before he heard the words “Why not you?” whispered to him.

  Eddie smiled to himself. The Lord was something else. Folks just didn’t know how incredible God was. Plus, He was funny and didn’t always give you a word in the way you would think He would. But that was because He was God and didn’t have to adhere to any rules or protocol that Eddie thought necessary or of any importance.

  Theophilus was grinning from ear to ear because he was happy that the Lord had not placed his name on Bishop James’s heart. Like Eddie, he was very happy being a pastor and had no aspirations to walk around in a purple clerical shirt. Black was just fine.

  “What you grinning about?” Percy asked. “’Cause I know you don’t think you are completely off the hook. You do know that you are responsible for running this campaign, Theophilus?”

  That grin was wiped clean off Theophilus’s face. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he’d have to go through running that campaign for this Triennial Conference, and especially when he considered what was brewing in the shadows.

  “Percy,” Theophilus asked. “What are we up against with this campaign? I mean other than Bishop Hemphill and his group trying to make some money, who else is in the game that you know I will not want to deal with?”

  “First, know that if Hemphill is coming to make money, then Ottah and Ray are coming with him, too,” Percy told him.

  Theophilus rolled his eyes upward as if to say, “Father, give me strength.” Ray was sneaky and good at working behind the scenes and keeping some kind of mess going. But Ottah Babatunde? Ottah was just plain crazy, and Theophilus hoped he didn’t have to snatch the brother by his regal Nigerian garment and commence to beating the tar out of him.

  “And Theophilus,” Percy continued. “You have to remember that some of all that money they plan on making will be used to purchase one of those three Episcopal seats.”

  “They can actually do that?” Obadiah asked, shaking his head because he already knew the answer to this question.

  “Of course they can,” Percy told him matter-of-factly. “Do you honestly think that Bishop Thomas Lyle Jefferson over in the Caribbean actually won his Episcopal seat three years ago? Man, Tom strolled up into one of those backroom conference meetings with a greasy cardboard box full of hundred-dollar bills. He had to have at least thirty grand on him. And then he strolled out, en route to the preacher robes booth, and placed his order for a sharp purple silk brocade robe like he had already been consecrated as a bishop.”

  “And,” Murcheson put in, “since this is the case, you can bet some of their money that you will be back up against the likes of Marcel Brown, Sonny Washington, Marcel’s daddy, and Bishop Larsen Giles.”

  Eddie just closed his eyes. Those negroes made you understand why Peter would lose it and pull out a sword, and then get to cutting the fool as he had in the Garden of Gethsemane.

  “Who or what else do we have to be concerned about?” Theophilus asked. If he had to run this campaign, he might as well know everything up front.

  “We need to watch what is going on in Bishop Jimmy Thekston’s district,” Percy told him. “The most dangerous candidates are coming out of his district. I know that the Ernest Brown/Larsen Giles camp will support Thekston even though there is no love lost between those two factions.

  “One of the candidates coming out of the Seventh District is Thekston’s newest woman, whose name escapes me right now. He has been pushing her hard in the Seventh and telling everybody that she is a maverick and trailblazer. But she has never pastored a church, or served as an assistant or associate pastor for that matter. Baby is fine. But I haven’t seen anything in her to justify granting her a preaching license, let alone running for bishop.”

  “So, Bishop,” Obadiah said, “is this just Thekston playing with the girl because she is his main squeeze for the moment?” And he knew it was only for the moment because Bishop Jimmy Thekston was mean and couldn’t keep a woman long.

  “Not quite, Obadiah. The girl is power-hungry, that’s for sure. But uuuhh… I think Thekston is using her to create some divisions between the men and women delegates. He doesn’t think she is bishop material but he knows that the women will flock to her. And he hopes that they will weaken the vote for the few good candidates running in this election. That way his real candidates will have a better chance of getting through.”

  “So what’s in it for the woman?” Obadiah continued.

  “Exposure and an excuse to be in close company with Bishop Thekston, and travel with him,” Denzelle said.

  “Good call, preacher,” Murcheson said.

  “You know we cannot let the Seventh District gain momentum at the conference,” Theophilus began. “I hate to malign an entire Episcopal district but there is just too much going on in the Seventh for my comfort.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie added. “Remember the preacher Bishop Thekston put in the hospital?”

  “Why and how did he do that?” Obadiah asked. He had heard about Bishop Thekston fighting preachers, but he didn’t know the dude was hospitalizing folk.

  Percy opened his mouth to answer that question but stopped when Murcheson said, “I got this one.”

  “Son,” he said, “Jimmy assigned one of his better preachers to a small and dying church outside the Houston area. When the man went to the church there were twelve members, all seventy and older. The building was practically a shack, and they could barely pay the church’s utility bills.

  “The new pastor, who was a high school science teacher and friends with his school’s wood shop teacher, got the building in shape. He put the original members to work, and sent them out into the community to invite folks to come to Sunday service and then eat dinner with them at the church. Severa
l of the members were excellent cooks, and soon the church’s membership rolls had quadrupled.

  “It wasn’t long before they bought a new building and the church grew some more. They were scheduled to celebrate going to the new building right after the Seventh District’s Annual Conference. But Thekston, who wanted to give this church to one of his cronies, reassigned the pastor. That man went to the bishop and told him it was wrong to move him at this point and he was staying with his church.”

  Murcheson paused for a second to shake his head. He was telling this story, and it was just as wild to him now, as the first time he’d heard it. He said, “When the man confronted that fool, Jimmy jumped up in his face, knocked him to the floor, and stomped on the man’s shoulder. The pastor’s members got so mad at the bishop they pushed him down and told him that he’d better not ever touch their pastor again. And they told him that he if tried to move the pastor they were coming back to kick his butt.

  “And that is just one of the stories coming out of the Seventh Episcopal District. There are many more, and most don’t have that same kind of ‘happy ending.’”

  “So where do we start?” Eddie asked. As much as he didn’t want to run for bishop, he knew in his heart of hearts that he had been called for such a time as this.

  TEN

  Bishop Larsen Giles hung up the telephone, shaking his head in disgust. His day had started out pretty good. But it began going downhill when he was told that Jimmy Thekston’s woman had just quit him because he refused to leave his wife for her. Then, when Thekston refused to give her a senior pastor church appointment, the girl got mad and called the wife. When Jimmy slapped her for calling his house she withdrew her candidacy for bishop, throwing a big monkey wrench into their plans. She knew why the bishop was sponsoring her, and as dumb as she was, she also knew that this would hurt their plans to split the female vote.

  Now, if that was not enough bad news, he’d just been told that Rev. Eddie Tate had thrown his hat in the race for bishop, and Theophilus Simmons was his campaign manager. Eddie was a formidable opponent on his own. But to have Theophilus at his side, running stuff? Could it get any worse?

  Larsen sighed heavily, and then buzzed for his wife Jackie to come to his office at the back of the house. When she walked into the room full of attitude, he surmised that it could get a whole lot worse. Sometimes he wished he’d never married Jackie. The girl was still fine after all of these years. But she had the nastiest attitude in the state of Michigan. And snooty as all get out—which he found curious for a woman who had been earning her money twirling tassels around on her butt when he first met her.

  “Here is your bologna sandwich,” she said, sighing and rolling her eyes as if he had asked her to process the bologna on the sandwich from scratch, and with her bare hands.

  “Why do you always have to eat a bologna sandwich, Larsen?” she snapped at him. “You are a wealthy bishop in the Gospel United Church. You should be setting an example and eating something with some class. How about a pastrami sandwich?”

  “Jackie, who is in this room to watch me eat my lunch? And if they were here, do you think that I would care?”

  “I care,” she snapped.

  “Why?”

  Jackie blew air out of her mouth and snapped her neck. Sometimes she couldn’t stand her husband.

  “Get out of my office,” he told her, making a mental note to leave that evil woman right here in Detroit when he left for the Triennial Conference in a few months.

  Jackie walked out and slammed the door as hard as she could. He could hear her calling him every name but “child of God” on the other side of the door. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The worst thing a man could do was live his life in such a poor and raunchy manner that the only woman he could lay claim to was one like his wife.

  Larsen picked up half of his sandwich and then threw it back down on the plate. That girl had fingerprints pressed down in the white bread. He flicked off a piece of chipped-off orange nail polish. He was so mad he picked up the plate and threw it against the door. He buzzed his wife and said, “You get your tail back in my office and clean up my mess.”

  Jackie didn’t do anything but say yes, and then went to get a broom and some wet paper towels. She’d heard the crash and knew better than to cross Larsen. Last time she did that he took her favorite pair of diamond earrings and flushed them down the toilet.

  Two weeks later Larsen scheduled a business meeting with Ernest Brown, his son Marcel, and Sonny Washington at Detroit’s only private gentlemen’s club for upscale black men. The membership roll had the names of some of the wealthiest, most influential elite black men in the Detroit metropolitan area. It was an exclusive organization and near to impossible to become a member of without the proper sponsorship. And the proper sponsorship was not forthcoming to any upscale brother. Money and clout, alone, wouldn’t do it. A brother getting the key to this club passed the scrutiny of the old heads running the show. And the old heads didn’t let anybody in who didn’t share their views of the world.

  Both Larsen Giles and Ernest Brown were longtime members of this club, and it didn’t even have a proper name. It was just known as “the Club,” and few people even knew of its location—which was somewhere on the outskirts of one of Detroit’s elite all-black neighborhoods. It was one of those “black establishment” organizations that gave credence to the idea that well-heeled black folk existed, and they were plentiful enough to allow for excessive exclusivity. It was a shame that “the Club” had made it on the list of such establishments.

  The Club’s building was a huge mansion with plenty of meeting and conference rooms. But Larsen, who had the most expensive membership package, had booked them a suite for this meeting. He felt that they would get down to business, and then bring in some entertainment for some much needed R & R once the official meeting was over.

  It had been a rough two weeks that had worked his last nerves and left him frazzled. Larsen had gone through three of his “I need to call somebody” women, along with three bottles of his best liquor. Right now Larsen’s nerves were so bad that he was contemplating rolling a joint out of the stash he had smuggled in on his last trip to visit Bishop Lyles in the Virgin Islands.

  Larsen put the bag away when Ernest Brown called to tell him that Marcel and Sonny Washington had just gotten back from Africa. He hoped they had some good news to share, so that he wouldn’t have to smoke up all his good dope.

  Sonny and Marcel, though much younger, were Larsen Giles’s partners in crime from back in the day. They ho’ed together, drank together, snorted some high-quality coke together on rare occasions, and shared tips on how to get your hands on church funds without getting caught. They had made a lot of money in Richmond back in 1963, and they were all anxious to find a business venture with the same potential as the Richmond brothel. Only this time their plans were going to succeed. Because they were determined that Theophilus Simmons and his boys were not shutting down a daggone thang this time.

  Whenever Marcel and Sonny went to Africa they always visited Mozambique, Swaziland, and Ghana. They rarely went to Nigeria because Sonny Washington couldn’t stand Ottah Babatunde, and was always threatening to “kick King Negro’s tail.” This time they also opted out of going to Ghana because Sonny didn’t want to do the preacher circuit. Bishop Abeeku got on his nerves when he had them scurrying across the Ghanaian countryside, going from church to church. Sonny and Marcel were not trying to go to church while they were in Africa. Neither did they want to meet with all of those preachers and church folk, pretending they were really enjoying those all-night services and prayer meetings.

  Those two preferred the amenities offered by Bishop Caruthers, and especially Bishop Hemphill. None of the African districts could offer what was available to them in the Seventeenth Episcopal District. The accommodations were superb, there was good food, and of course the women—oh, the women. And if that was not good enough, this time they had been treated to some pr
oducts from Uncle Lee Lee’s farm. They came back to the States believers. As Sonny would say, “There’s gold in them there melons.”

  They brought back samples of WP21 for Bishop Giles and Marcel’s father. It had been easy to slip this small amount past customs. And they needed this meeting to discuss how they were going to get enough of the potion into the States, to Durham, North Carolina, and into the hands of their customers.

  Plus, they had some serious questions that needed to be answered before they embarked upon this venture. How could they best market WP21? How would they advertise something like this in a quiet and discreet manner? And what would be the criteria for identifying and approaching their potential customers?

  Bishop Giles poured himself some of the watermelon wine Sonny Washington had shipped back to the States. He sipped some, then quickly reached for a glass of ice water and gulped it down in the midst of choking with the tears streaming down his cheeks. Sonny, who had hoped to score some points with the bishop by giving him this gift of the wine, got worried. He sighed and exhaled when Larsen slapped the table and said, “Boy, that’s what I call liquor. It’s good and powerful like some good tail. You know, a woman who knows what she is doing can make your eyes water like that, too.”

  The bishop took another sip, and banged on the table some more.

  “Whew! I haven’t had anything this good since my daddy made his last batch of moonshine down in Batesville, Mississippi.”

  “Batesville, Mississippi, Bishop,” Marcel asked. “Where is Batesville, Mississippi?”

  “It’s right off of Highway 55, about thirty minutes north of Charleston, Mississippi, where your favorite bishop, Murcheson James, is from, along with Theophilus Simmons’s wife, Essie, and your old fiancée, Saphronia James,” Cleotis Clayton answered as he walked into the suite looking like a million dollars.