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  Denzelle sat down at the table with a gray leather Bible in his hand, knowing that this brother, who had ex-con all over him, wouldn’t ask him to move to another table. He hoped that the only thing the brother would sniff out on him was that he was a preacher. It might not sit too well with him that he was cop—and an FBI agent at that.

  A cute cafeteria worker with a big, juicy behind bounced over to the table. She put a hot mug of coffee down, along with some delicious-looking chicken salad on toasted wheat bread, topped with some of the reddest and juiciest slices of thick tomatoes Cleotis had seen outside of his grandmother’s farm in Mississippi. He looked up at the waitress and said, “I’ll have one of those.”

  She nodded at Cleotis and then gave Rev. Flowers a warm “You need anything else, Daddy?” smile. All Denzelle did was wink, suck on that toothpick he’d just stuck in his mouth for style and effect, and then say, “Naw, baby… at least not right now.”

  The waitress got a slight twitch in her hips. She grinned some more and said, “Pastor, you so crazy.”

  Denzelle winked, took the toothpick out of his mouth, picked up his sandwich, and bit into it. Cleotis watched Rev. Flowers chomping down on that scrumptious sandwich, hoping the cute cafeteria lady with the brick-house body would hurry back with his food.

  Denzelle finished the first half of his sandwich and sipped on some coffee. It was perfect. Baby had remembered to put some cinnamon in it. He was going to have to give her a little more than a tip later. She had been good to him all week, and had been giving him the lowdown on the preachers he’d been watching for his mentor, Eddie Tate, and his boss, Greg Williams, up in northern Virginia.

  The woman put an identical sandwich down in front of Cleotis. He reached for his wallet but Denzelle shook his head and let him know that he had it covered. The woman smiled at Denzelle some more and then brushed her hip up against his shoulder. It took all of the strength Denzelle had in him not to reach out and pat her behind, which had to be as delectable as his sandwich.

  Cleotis bit into the sandwich. Those tomatoes had to be homegrown. This was one of the best chicken salad sandwiches he’d eaten in a long time. He watched as Rev. Flowers finished his second half, and suddenly and out of the blue got the oddest feeling that he was sitting with a cop. He pretended to be into his sandwich and tried to observe the set of this preacher’s eyes without being noticed too much. Cops had special eyes—as if they could see right through you, especially if you were lying to them.

  This brother’s eyes were kind of weird. Too kind for a cop but too sharp not to be one. Then it dawned on Cleotis that this brother was a preacher and a cop, no…

  “FBI,” Cleotis blurted out before he could catch himself.

  “Huh,” was all Denzelle could say. He hoped that his cover wasn’t blown. He’d been being a cop all week, and pretending at being a preacher, even though when he was with the FBI he felt like a preacher pretending to be a cop.

  “You are FBI, aren’t you, Rev. Flowers? Dang, man, that’s a terrifying combination. Work for the Lord and the feds. You are scary negro, brother-man.”

  Denzelle smiled. This time it was the cop smile—the one that sent chills through a brother-man who was up to no good. And under any other circumstances it would have sent chills through Cleotis. Only thing, he’d recently quit his illegal activity in this city, and was looking forward to going back home. So he didn’t have anything to be worried about. Because as good a cop as he suspected this preacher was, he knew that whatever Rev. Flowers knew—and he suspected that the man knew plenty—he didn’t have anything that could stick on Cleotis.

  Denzelle smiled again. This time it was the smile of a preacher. The brother was beginning to give poor Cleotis the willies. He said, “Guilty as charged. Only thing, brother, is that I don’t want this to get out. I don’t have a lot on you right now. But if you blow my cover, I swear I’ll get what I need and send you up for another stint in prison. Only this time you will not get anything that will make it possible for you to get clemency and get out. And you won’t be going to a prison near your home. I like the federal prison system ’cause I can send you where I think you need to go.”

  Now the preacher was grinning like a preacher and sounding like a cop with eyes that held a combination of the Scriptures and the law. Cleotis was scared of this man, and wondered if anybody else had sense enough to be afraid of this brother. He hoped his boy Dotsy Hamilton was running late as usual. Because as soon as he got a whiff of this cop he was going to piss in his pants. And Grady Grey? Poor Grady wouldn’t be able to keep any food in his system for the rest of the day. Folk didn’t know that Grady Grey was a sensitive kind of brother. And his entire digestive tract went crazy when he encountered something like this.

  This was a scary brother. And he was at this table to find out about the very operation that put the three of them at risk for a conviction and some serious time.

  “Tell me about WP21,” Denzelle said evenly.

  Cleotis choked on his sandwich. He thought, Dang, this bro is good.

  Cleotis wasn’t sure if he should spill his guts—even though he’d never been a snitch—or just play dumb. He opted for dumb, shrugged, and said, “What in the world is WP21?”

  Denzelle appreciated this man’s not selling out the folks he was involved with. But he didn’t appreciate being played for a fool. He leaned into the table and stared into Cleotis’s eyes. Cleotis started to sweat. This time the FBI agent, the one who would shoot you in the head without hesitation, was looking straight at him.

  Denzelle said, “I’m gonna ask you one more time. And then if you don’t answer me to my satisfaction, I’m putting a tail on you and your two boys from Durham, Dotsy Hamilton and Grady Grey. When we have something on you all, we’ll beat what we want you to tell us out of you, simply because we can.”

  Cleotis pushed his sandwich away. All of a sudden he wasn’t all that hungry. In fact, he was feeling kind of queasy. He pushed the coffee away. It would only upset his stomach more. Denzelle, on the other hand, was feeling as if he could use another sandwich. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and then drank up his glass of water.

  Cleotis decided to stall for now until he could talk to Dotsy and Grady and get a better feel for this man. He decided to tell Denzelle Flowers just enough to keep the brother off of him until the three of them could figure out a plan, and then have enough information that they could get some immunity with if they needed it.

  He said, “Pastor, all I know for the moment is that WP21 is a drug for the men preachers, especially the ones fifty and over, who want to make this week memorable.”

  Denzelle grinned and sucked on his tooth. He’d had a taste of the stuff and could only imagine what it would do for some of these old pimps parading around in clerical collars, being more trouble than they were worth, and continuing a tradition of womanizing that seriously undermined the spiritual growth of folks in the church. Denzelle sometimes worried about the fate of his beloved church if they didn’t put a lid on this craziness.

  There were people who wanted to turn their lives completely over to Christ. But they would never be able to take that leap of faith if some of these preachers kept doing stuff that was in complete opposition to the Word of God. Unfortunately, people like this would use a bad preacher as an excuse to run from Jesus, while they hoped in the innermost recesses of their hearts that a real preacher existed to point the way back to the Lord.

  Cleotis Clayton was sitting across from him looking exactly like somebody who secretly wanted to connect with a good preacher. Of all of the people Denzelle would have expected to be searching for Jesus, it wasn’t this brother. Maybe Bishop Hemphill, Bishop Giles, Sonny Washington, Ernest Brown, and Marcel Brown were not winning at their game. Maybe there was hope for the Gospel United Church after all.

  “Cleotis,” Denzelle began, “I’m FBI. I’m a preacher. And if all goes well at this Triennial Conference I’ll be the pastor of a church here in my home state of
North Carolina. I got this piece,” Denzelle pulled his coat back to reveal a fancy charcoal leather shoulder holster weighed down by his gun.

  “If I come back with enough information to help you, Reverend,” Cleotis began, wondering if he was having a moment of temporary insanity, sitting here offering to help a cop, “will you make it possible for me to have a heart-to-heart talk with Murcheson James? Will you grant me immunity? Will you forget that my Durham boys, Grady Grey and Big Dotsy Hamilton, ever had anything to do with this? And will you let us keep all the money we’ve been making on the side with our own version of WP21?”

  Denzelle started laughing and slapped the table. He said, “Are you telling me that the three of you figured out that formula? I’ve sent several batches to the FBI lab in Virginia, and they cannot duplicate that stuff.”

  “We haven’t figured out a thing,” Cleotis said, guarded, making a mental note to put a better watch on his big mouth. “We just made some money, okay. But uhhh, I could find out for sure if there is something out there being presented as the real deal, even though I suspect it’s tainted.”

  “Tainted?” Denzelle queried. He’d had a taste of that stuff and it was awful. What could make what Cleotis had gotten ahold of worse than the stuff he had ingested?

  “Yeah, preacher, tainted. Bishop Hemphill is as greedy and crooked as they come. I never thought I’d meet someone who was worse that the ungodly four—Bishop Larsen Giles, Rev. Marcel Brown, Rev. Sonny Washington, and the late Bishop Otis Caruthers. But as bad as they are, they ain’t got jack on Rucker Hemphill.”

  “Okay,” Denzelle said, thinking that Cleotis was right about Bishop Hemphill. “If you just happen to run up on some information, you can reach me here. And I suggest that you make sure to contact me. Don’t get slick, and then find yourself locked up.”

  Denzelle pushed his FBI card with his mobile phone number on it across the table. Cleotis read it carefully and pushed it back. Denzelle put the card back in his breast pocket. This was serious if Cleotis had memorized his number because he didn’t want to get caught with that card on him.

  “If you and any of your friends need to talk to me, I’ll make sure y’all are okay. So what you need to do right now is close down shop, so that I don’t have to come and take what you already have.”

  Cleotis narrowed his eyes. Even though he was closing down his end of the business, there was still some good money to be made before he left Durham. Cleotis, Grady, and Dotsy, with the help of Twilight from the Sock It to Me Club in Warren County, had figured out the formula for WP21. Twilight’s grandmother grew watermelons, and she also made natural medicines. It was Twilight’s grandmother who had broken it down and made a couple of batches for them, as long as they sliced off some profits for her and her grandbaby. Nobody knew they had this because they had sold the potion on the down low and outside Durham County. They were making too much money to shut down shop now. They needed to sell a few more batches before closing down.

  Denzelle could see straight through Cleotis. Yeah—he was going to lose a whole lot of money. But that was a drop in the bucket compared to losing your freedom, then having all kinds of fines and fees to pay that would eat up everything you had earned.

  “So what you’re about to tell me is that a suite in a federal prison of my choosing is better than what I’m trying to offer you and your colleagues.”

  Cleotis squirmed. Hadn’t realized it was that serious. Just thought this was about some low-life preachers lapping up some of that nasty stuff to get their freak on.

  “Look,” Denzelle was saying. “I know Dotsy Hamilton. And I went to school with Grady Grey. They do not want to go to prison any more than you do. And while Dotsy is basically an okay brother, he’ll still drop your butt to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, wearing some cement gators, if he thinks you had anything to do with him getting busted.”

  Cleotis sighed heavily. This cop/preacher was right. They’d have to give it up. He raised his hands in surrender and waited to find out what this deadly preacher was planning. It was a scary and yet strangely exhilarating feeling. He smiled at Denzelle Flowers, who grinned and held out his hand for some skin. Sometimes criminals made the best allies.

  SIXTEEN

  Theophilus and Essie, Eddie, Johnnie, Theophilus’s sister Thayline, and her husband Willis packed into the modest-sized elevator at their hotel, the Governor’s Inn in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, right outside of Durham. It was a nice hotel, had decent food, and a good location for tonight’s celebration.

  They knew that they were in for a ferocious fight for that Episcopal seat, and had decided to “travel light” for this conference. The last time they had attended this conference they had had a much larger entourage. But this time the folk (Lee Allie, Mr. Pompey, Uncle Booker, Rose Neese, and Theophilus’s parents) had decided to stay at home. They said they were too old to be bothered, would watch over the children, and would keep them lifted up in prayer.

  They had come a long way since that Triennial General Conference back in 1963, when the only places they could have a big banquet was at church, at a historically black college, or at one of the Masonic halls. It was nice to celebrate this event at the Governor’s Inn. And they hoped that being here would give them a respite from the cutthroat and intense church politics that permeated the campus meetings and the worship services held at Rev. Quincey’s home church, Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church, not too far from Eva T. Marshall University.

  Tonight’s affair was the big fancy event held at every Triennial Conference. The tickets were pricey, and they hoped that the food would taste good. There was nothing worse than having to sit through a banquet with a bunch of nasty-tasting food spread out all over your table. And then you hoped the nearest McDonald’s or Hardee’s was still open when the banquet was finally over.

  Thayline and Willis would have preferred to skip this old boring banquet and spend the evening eating at Mama Dip’s Restaurant several miles down the way in Chapel Hill. But they had promised Theophilus, or Baybro, that they would stomach a bunch of hinctified negroes who didn’t have a clue about what real life was all about.

  Thayline, who had worked in food service for years, made a quick and thorough scan of the food tables as soon as they had given the mean-looking women at the front table their tickets and gone into the banquet room.

  Good, she thought. They are giving us a buffet. Maybe there is hope for this affair.

  Thayline walked up to one of the food tables to check out the servers and find out what was on the menu. She never ate off of any banquet table if the servers’ uniforms were not crisp and clean, there was too much hand contact with the food, they talked and laughed too much over the dishes, they left the table messy, or they were slow and surly when you were trying to get something to eat.

  Unfortunately, the generic church banquet hadn’t changed much over the past ten or fifteen years. Usually, it was the same-old-same-old—baked chicken, string beans, some kind of potato, salad, rolls, chocolate cake, and potato pie. Sometimes they served you at your table. Sometimes they let you serve yourself at a mock buffet table. But it was still the same-old-same-old.

  But tonight Thayline was pleasantly surprised by the spread laid out before her. It was a delight to behold. Fried chicken, Buffalo wings, huge shrimp, chopped barbecue, and baked chicken. There were three salads—spinach, seven-layer, and one of those old-fashioned lettuce-and-tomato salads with plenty of cucumbers, red onions, and boiled eggs. Plus, there were plenty of delectable side dishes including potato salad, deviled eggs, deep fried string beans coated with red pepper, fresh veggies and a homemade ranch dip, fried okra, cauliflower, zucchini, and squash, fresh fruit salad loaded down with red, juicy watermelon, and an assortment of homemade rolls. There was a delicious sparkling punch as well as fabulous desserts—red velvet cake squares, slices of German chocolate and lemon-coconut cake, huge chocolate chip and butterscotch cookies, and tiny squares of homemade fudge in white and
rich milk chocolate.

  While Thayline was walking around trying to find the caterer, Miss Hattie Lee Booth, who she heard had recently turned in her pole as a stripper at the Lucky Lady Club, her husband, Willis, was busy refilling his plate. This food was delicious and he was glad that they didn’t have to sit at a boring banquet table, waiting for their section of the banquet hall to be served, and then have to wait even longer to eat because it was considered bad taste to start eating while there were folks still left to be served.

  Johnnie Tate was so happy to see her girl Thayline. She remembered when the two of them used to cook and serve food in those ugly, hospital green service uniforms and black hairnets. Thayline used to fuss at her for hemming her uniform too short and taking it in on the sides so that it hugged all her curves.

  The two of them laughed whenever they talked about Johnnie’s sexy wardrobe back in the day, and how it got and kept Eddie’s attention. The red chiffon chemise with the big dip in the back that Johnnie wore to that infamous service to vote for the new bishops in 1963 had been priceless. That dress was the defining moment for Eddie. He couldn’t keep his hands and eyes off Johnnie in that outfit, and purposed in his heart that he would marry that girl and keep her supplied with an arsenal of sexy dresses. To this day there was no woman in their church who could compete with how good and sexy the first lady of Mount Zion Gospel United Church in Chicago looked in her clothes.

  By the time Bishop James and Bishop Jennings had arrived at their table, they were all well into their second helpings of all of that good food. For once this was a decent banquet. At least it was decent thus far. Eddie waved at the bishops, jaw stuffed with those delicious fried string beans.