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  Cleotis was here for a reason—and it sure wasn’t anything reasonable about church and the Lord. Johnnie made a mental note to find out as much as she could about what was really going on over at the Washington campaign booth. Because the last time Cleotis Clayton had teamed up with the likes of Marcel Brown and Sonny Washington, their entire denomination had been a heartbeat away from being torn to shreds.

  THIRTEEN

  Cleotis was tired and frustrated. They were running into trouble, snags, and setbacks at every turn. Every time he felt he had made two steps of progress, something popped up, and he ended up taking four steps back past the first two steps. Frustrating. Nerve-racking.

  If the frustration of this week was not enough, Cleotis now had to deal with the competition coming from Eddie Tate’s booth. The Tate campaign was packing church folk up in that booth with ice cream—ice cream. How in the world could ice cream compete with what was at their booth?

  But Cleotis knew why. He’d sneaked and tried that ice cream. It was so good it would make you want to hop up and slap somebody. Plus, many of the delegates liked Rev. Tate and the folks on his campaign team. Unfortunately, a lot of folk had issues with Sonny Washington and Marcel Brown. And they preferred socializing at another campaign booth—unless, of course, they had enough of something good to counteract that.

  This was going to be a long week. At least Cleotis hadn’t had to be worried with all of these preachers in a cramped-up campaign booth when they were in Richmond back in ’63. Heck, on some days he hadn’t had to be bothered with anybody. He could get lost in one of the rooms with the bodies in the funeral home, and be confident that nobody was going to follow him there.

  But that was not the case this time. Cleotis hoped that they would get this operation right. Because right now he felt he was coming close to wasting his time. And after time in prison, time was very precious to Cleotis Clayton.

  Every single time he got tangled up with Bishop Larsen Giles, Ernest Brown, Marcel Brown, and Sonny Washington, something funky went down. And Cleotis had said as much to his cousin, Glodean, when she complained that he was not supportive enough of her husband’s campaign.

  Glodean was right, too. Cleotis wasn’t supportive enough because that would require something akin to caring about Sonny, this campaign, and Sonny’s being a bishop. And since Cleotis didn’t care about any of that, he wasn’t supportive enough of his cousin’s husband’s cause.

  Glodean and Cleotis had fought like cats and dogs since they were little bitty things. And they still fought with each other many decades later. Glodean thought Cleotis was a spoiled ne’er-do-well. Cleotis thought his cousin was bratty and had an overinflated opinion of herself. Both were right in their assessments of each other.

  Cleotis flushed the toilet and washed his hands. He had ignored the phone the first two times it rang off the hook. He had only been back in his hotel room for ten minutes. But it occurred to him that it might be something he needed to attend to—especially since the person wouldn’t stop calling him. It could be Big Dotsy with some good news about making more WP21. He snatched the phone up, and then rolled his eyes the moment Glodean’s voice came through the receiver.

  He sighed heavily and said, “Yes, Glodean. What do you want from me now?”

  “I would think that my own first cousin would be running around the campus practically shouting over the possibility of one of our family members becoming a bishop.”

  “That negro you lay up with, who used to beat your behind until you got some sense and started controlling the purse strings, ain’t one of my relatives. I’ve told you that before, and I’m telling you again.”

  “Jealous, just jealous,” Glodean snapped. She didn’t know why she had called Cleotis. He was her cousin, and even though she loved him, she also couldn’t stand him. Why did this jailbird always have to be right?

  Cleotis used to be right when they were little. Cleotis had been right when he told her that he was getting as much money up front as he could because the Richmond ho’ house was doomed to fail. And Cleotis was right now, when he told her husband and his boys that getting the WP21 business up and running wouldn’t be as simple and easy as they wanted to think it would be.

  “You are working my nerves, Cleotis.”

  “Then hang up the phone. You called me, remember? And by the way, quit calling Mother and telling on me because you don’t like the way I handle things.”

  Glodean acted as if she hadn’t heard that and said, “Sonny is not happy with the way the money is coming in with that potion stuff. So you need to get on it and do whatever it is that you do when you are doing your criminal activities. Understand?”

  Cleotis hung up the telephone, and didn’t answer it when Glodean called back. He wasn’t going to hurt his cousin’s feelings (as much as the girl got on his nerves) by telling her why they were having so much trouble with the supply of WP21. If Sonny’s people would quit dipping into the stuff to use it with some of those loose “conference women,” it’s possible that they would have more of it to sell while they struggled to duplicate the formula.

  Sonny and his crew were really making this harder than it had to be. Plus, as if dealing with them weren’t bad enough, he now had to have more contact with that Rico Sneed. Cleotis hated that he needed Rico as much as he did. He wished that he had not been so lazy and taken that computer class offered in prison. That class had had everything he would have needed for this business, and he could have done this all on his own. But for now he was stuck with Rico, who was working on a computerized program that would tell them who really needed WP21, who just wanted the drug, and what amount was safe for each client. WP21 was nothing to mess with. It had to be measured out according to age, height, weight, and a rough estimate of the client’s health and physical prowess.

  Cleotis had tested this drug on himself, Big Dotsy, Big Dotsy’s ace Grady Grey, and a few of their other business associates. After they had all “worked” the drug off during a visit to the Sock It to Me Club out in Warren County, North Carolina, they figured out how best to package and sell this moneymaker. They learned about the necessity of giving doses of the drug based on the potential client’s height, weight, and physical health from Big Dotsy.

  Big Dotsy, whose personal philosophy was to live large and with great gusto, ignored Cleotis’s warning about how to use WP21. Naturally, since he was Big Dotsy, he took too much. Dotsy mistakenly assumed that his weight and thick muscular build would offset any problems that would befall a brother with a slighter build.

  Unfortunately, Dotsy hadn’t accounted for his height. Dotsy was short, and as Cleotis said, the drug didn’t have too far to go, causing him extreme discomfort when his body refused to return to a more relaxed state.

  At first they were having a good time out in the country at the Sock It to Me Club. If you were going to give WP21 a test run, this was definitely the ideal location. This club specialized in providing everything that a man was not supposed to have. And prior to Dotsy’s mishap, they were looking into making the club one of their main clients in the area. But before they could get that far, Dotsy experienced complications from the drug and found that he couldn’t leave the premises when they were ready to go.

  “Dotsy, man, let’s go,” Cleotis hollered to that back section of the club where all of the stuff you didn’t want people to know you were doing was happening.

  “Cleotis, man, I… I… I’m in trouble. You and Grady got to come back here to help a brother out.”

  Big Dotsy was sounding so pitiful Cleotis got scared, and went and found Grady Grey. They hurried to the back with the safeties off their pistols, only to find Dotsy standing facing the wall, his back toward them.

  “Man, you all right?” Grady asked, trying to conceal the worry creeping into his voice. Dotsy wasn’t even standing right.

  “I can’t leave, Grady,” Dotsy answered. It was clear he was fighting back tears. “This stuff got me messed up.”

  “What
stuff?” Grady demanded.

  “WP21. It’s messed me up, man.”

  Cleotis started getting nervous. He knew how WP21 could mess a brother up, and had hoped he wouldn’t have to share that information with Grady and Big Dotsy. Brothers on the streets were suspicious of something that made you grow way beyond capacity, then caused you to shrivel up real small as if you were walking around in Antarctica dressed in some lightweight plaid Bermuda shorts. Something like that made brothers think that this so-called miracle potion was in reality a part of a conspiracy of “the Man” to take out brothers in the hood, and reduce the black population by lowering fertility rates.

  Cleotis was hoping that Dotsy would not turn around. But that is exactly what Dotsy did.

  “Ohhh… laaawwwwd,” Grady yelled out and then put his hands over his eyes. “Man… that’s… that’s… not natural, even for a smooth operator like yourself.”

  “I know,” Big Dotsy said, sniffling up snot that was running down his nose and into his mouth. “This is horrible.”

  “I told you to be careful taking that stuff, man,” Cleotis admonished, now very worried and trying with all his might to keep his eyes off Big Dotsy. But that effort proved to be quite futile. It was not a sight for sore eyes. It was an eyesore.

  “Can you walk out the club, man?” he asked Dotsy, knowing good and well what the answer would be.

  “Naw, Cleotis, man. I’m having trouble walking right. And I can barely sit down.”

  Dotsy started toward the door. His whole body was so stiff, it made him take his steps like the Mummy all dressed up in a smooth orange playah’s suit.

  “That’s messed up, man,” Grady told him. “You cannot walk out of this place like that. Why don’t I get behind you, and then Cleotis, you get in front. Maybe we can walk him out without things being too obvious.”

  “Grady,” Cleotis said, “if you think that I am going to walk out of here in front of Dotsy, you on something you ain’t been telling us about.”

  Grady glanced over at Dotsy. Cleotis was right. They couldn’t walk out like that. He said, “Why don’t we go and get the club’s bouncer, Twilight? I know he’ll walk out in front of Dotsy.”

  “That is because Twilight is flaming gay!” Dotsy yelled, and then got so upset he passed out. But he came to immediately, and in excruciating pain because Dotsy had had the misfortune to fall flat on his face. Actually he hadn’t really fallen all that flat but he was on his face—sort of.

  “We can’t take our boy out of this room like that,” Grady said. “We can’t leave him here alone for the night to let the drug get out of his system, either.”

  As much as he didn’t want to see his “boy” like that, Grady was concerned about a bunch of things. He said, “Dotsy, man, can you pee?”

  “Grady, man,” Dotsy said. “Does it look like I can pee? I mean, if you were jacked up like me, would you be able to pee?”

  Grady shook his head.

  Cleotis said, “Looks like we’re here for the night,” and went to get them some food and liquor. He made a secret promise that once he left the Sock It to Me Club in Warren, North Carolina, he would never ever return.

  They made Dotsy as comfortable as they could before making themselves comfortable. A few bottles of the house’s best liquor later, they were feeling better. And after checking the door and their pistols, they settled in for the night. By early morning Dotsy was limber enough to leave. They went and got Twilight, who eased them out of a side door and then helped them get Dotsy, who was now sick as if he had a terrible case of the flu, into Grady’s car. Twilight, who was big and tough, as well as trustworthy, promised to get Dotsy’s prized silver-and-black Cadillac Seville back to his house before the club opened back up.

  Watching the effects of WP21 on a cat like Dotsy Hamilton made Cleotis and Grady wonder if they needed to leave selling this stuff alone. Dotsy was a man who could drink a fifth of the strongest liquor like a can of Pepsi-Cola. Grady had seen him smoke four fat joints of his best weed—the stuff Grady grew in his backyard—and barely get a case of the munchies. If WP21 messed up a dude like Dotsy Hamilton, that was some scary, scary mess.

  But they did learn this much from Dotsy’s ordeal—that WP21 worked. This drug was no joke. It worked fast and was definitely long-lasting—maybe too long-lasting if last night was a gauge of the drug’s effectiveness. But the jones that came down on you when WP21 was leaving your system was like nothing any of these three men had experienced. It made them all wonder how that old man over in Africa had survived this drug for so many years with the kind of monkey on his back that could eat you up alive.

  Spending the night at that raunchy Sock It to Me Club made Cleotis give some serious thought to joining the church and turning his life over to the Lord. That thing had scared him pretty bad, and it made him very nervous about what could happen if the greediest and raunchiest of their customers took too much WP21. For starters, all those negroes he was working for in the denomination were at risk for hospitalization, stroke, and a heart attack if they kept going at this stuff as they had been doing over the past weeks. As both Grady and Dotsy had noted when they met with those preachers, Bishop Rucker Hemphill was already a goner.

  What had started off as a sure moneymaker was now becoming a sure-shot mess. It was also getting out of hand—which made criminals like Cleotis Clayton, Dotsy Hamilton, and Grady Grey nervous. They knew from experience that anything that could make money like that would draw in the wrong folk and pique the interest of the folks with the badges. Cleotis hoped that they could get into the conference, make their money, and get out in one piece.

  He wasn’t going back to prison for these preachers. They weren’t worth that kind of disruption to his carefully rebuilt life. Cleotis had taken the fall for these preachers back in 1963. But he wasn’t going down like that again. Ray’s dad, Bishop Otis Caruthers, had paid him a nice chunk of change for going down like that. But he wasn’t traveling down that road a second time. If Cleotis got caught with this, he was telling on everybody.

  Cleotis didn’t understand preachers like Sonny Washington, Marcel Brown, Ernest Brown, and Larsen Giles. On those rare occasions when he felt a need to talk to the Lord, he always asked Him why those men had been allowed to enter the ministry. Cleotis had never witnessed them bearing fruits of righteousness. He’d seen good fruit coming from Theophilus Simmons when he pastored Greater Hope in Memphis. And even when Cleotis himself wasn’t doing right, at least he was honest about being on the wrong side of the law. He had never tried to pretend that he was a godly man when he knew he wasn’t.

  Cleotis had read the Bible—Genesis to Revelation—three times while he was in prison. Every time he finished reading Chapter 22 in the Book of Revelation he was amazed to discover that nothing in the Word supported the works of these preachers, or the other ministers in the Gospel United Church who were like them. And for those on the fence, the Lord was quite specific in Revelation 3:15–16, when He said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

  The New King James Version read, “I will vomit you out of My mouth.” Cleotis thought those words said it best. Whenever someone “vomited,” the substance was so repulsive the person could not keep it in—it had to be forcefully discharged from the system.

  Those were powerful words. And Cleotis Clayton knew God meant every single word spoken in the Scriptures. So, if he, a man of the world, knew this, why didn’t those so-called men of God know it, too? Just thinking about it made Cleotis break out into a cold sweat. Sometimes he wanted to fall prostrate before God’s throne—but couldn’t. He wasn’t ready to give up the world. And men like the preachers he dealt with were making it real easy for him to cling to his carnal ways.

  FOURTEEN

  Marcel Brown picked up a large baggie filled to the brim with WP21. He wrinkled his nose. This potion was some
funky stuff. He pulled a pale blue silk handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his gray suit jacket and dabbed at his eyes.

  He had been using this stuff regularly, and then suddenly lost his taste for it. For some reason neither he nor Sonny had had the same withdrawal symptoms as the others. Marcel thought that it may have been because they took the stuff in very tiny doses. He noticed that the drug worked better that way. And after a short period Marcel also noticed that neither one of them could stand the stuff in his mouth anymore. It was as if the tiny doses gave them some kind of built-in resistance and repulsion to the drug.

  As much fun as they were having, and as many customers as they had finally started pulling in, Marcel was worried nonetheless. Against his advice the rest of the group had been giving out freebies of the stuff, which had begun to eat into their inventory for people wanting to buy WP21. They were going to have to do something fast to get more of it.

  The preliminary meetings of the Triennial General Conference had already begun. And they would need a whole lot more to meet the ever-increasing demand for the potion as more people came onto Evangeline T. Marshall University’s campus. Those folk would be hungry for some entertainment, and this need would only intensify the closer they got to election day.

  Marcel desperately needed money to buy off delegates and purchase some votes for Sonny. They were far behind in the polls. So they were going to have to snatch votes away from Eddie Tate any way they could. And that was going to cost a whole lot of money. If they were going to make this work, they were going to have to figure out a way to manufacture this stuff themselves.

  Time was not on their side. They had not been able to get enough of the drug in from Mozambique. Then, Chief had never sent them the full amount requested for the last shipments they had received. And as a result the new customer base Marcel had worked so hard to build was becoming frustrated, the men were uncomfortable with the side effects of the drug, and they were getting desperate to experience the benefits of this “magic potion” again. These men were worrying Marcel with their constant demands, and about to drive him crazy.