All of ten minutes. That’s as long as he took.
Dorsey watched Father Melcic standing over the coffin, mumbling his way through a small black prayerbook. The coffin sat on a wheeled gurney standing at the communion rail’s center gates; the priest held the prayer book to his chest and blessed the air above it with the sign of the cross. Finished, he motioned for the undertaker to wheel the coffin away, up the center aisle of the church.
All of ten minutes, Dorsey thought again, and you sleep-walked all the way.
The six mourners had taken the first two pews to the right of the center aisle, three in each. Dorsey stood in the second aisle behind Al and watched Father Melcic retreat across the altar to the sanctuary. “Give anything to the priest yet?” Dorsey asked, tapping Al on the shoulder.
“Cash.” Al tilted back on his heels to whisper his reply. “Twenty-five. Should’ve used a check. Could’ve stopped payment.”
Martin Dorsey, dressed in dark blue and wearing a black mourner’s band on his left upper arm, stepped from the first pew to follow the coffin. In the aisle he waited to take the arm of Mrs. Rosek, and Al followed solemnly behind. Waiting in the second pew for Bernie and Ironbox Boyle to step out ahead of him, Dorsey considered the difference between Father Melcic and Father Jancek. This guy here, Melcic, he’s only got ten or twelve years on Jancek, but they’ve been hard ones and they show. Years spent putting the fear of God in guys who got drunk and beat their families and slapped their wives around, and years spent knocking the stuffing out of kids who were two steps away from the juvenile detention center. So Melcic is all business and hard at the edges, a little bitter and disillusioned, while Jancek stays young drinking the elixir of public acclaim. Young enough to have an older man die.
Dorsey started up the center aisle, keeping a few paces behind Mrs. Boyle. As they moved outside to the church steps, facing the cramped row houses of Twenty-second Street, Dorsey spotted a white van with a Channel Three logo parked ten feet behind the hearse. A two-man film crew kept the light and the camera trained on the coffin as it was wheeled down a handicapped ramp and across the sidewalk to the hearse. Without success, Dorsey searched the street for Sam Hickcock.
“The voice-over, they do that later.” Martin Dorsey stood at his son’s side. “In the studio. The reporter adds the narration as they play the tape for editing. You learn that when you try to get elected in the so-called Electronic Age. They’ll want shots of us, too.” Martin Dorsey gestured to Mrs. Boyle, and she followed as he descended the steps and crossed the sidewalk to his rented car and driver. As he had predicted, the camera followed him each step of the way.
Bernie told Dorsey he had to get back to the office and left, saying he would call later. Out on the sidewalk, satisfied that the coffin had been loaded into the hearse without mishap, Al told the undertaker he could start for the cemetery. “We’ll visit the grave later,” Al said, after rejoining his wife and Dorsey at the top of the steps. “The priest won’t be there for the last farewell, so there’s no sense in goin’ now.”
Rose agreed and invited Dorsey back to the bar for lunch. “We hoped Bernie and your father would’ve come. Hoped to make something of a wake out of it.” She was all South Side in Dorsey’s eyes. Short and squat, with years of hard and devoted work showing on her face but not in her eyes. They stayed clear and bright with love. That face could work you over but good, and the eyes said you were better off for it.
“I’ll be along this evening,” Dorsey said.
Rose dug into her square black purse. “Better give this to you now, then. Good thing I brought it along.” She handed a small note-sized white envelope to Dorsey.
Slipping a thumbnail under the flap, Dorsey tore open the envelope and took out a color snapshot of Russie and his father sitting at dinner. The setting, decorated for Christmas, was his father’s dining room. On the back, in what must have been Russie’s scrawl, the photo was dated Christmas Day, 1973. When you were in the service, Dorsey reminded himself. Most likely, Ironbox took the shot.
“It was in the drawer where he kept what he figured to be his important papers,” Al said. “Russie, I mean. Him havin’ no family anybody knows of, we had to sort out the stuff. The clothes, they all went to St. Vincent de Paul’s. There was some more stuff like this: souvenirs. There was a stack of old ball-game tickets, thick as your hand is long. Mostly from Forbes Field and basketball at the Arena. Some of your old games, I bet. We might frame a bunch of ’em, hang it behind the bar.”
Dorsey slipped the photo into the envelope and put it in his coat pocket. “Thanks, Al. You too, Rose. Thanks a lot.”
“Take care,” Rose said, patting his arm. “You look after yourself. The big one, the guy they showed grabbing at you on the TV. That son of a bum, he’s still around. You take good care.”
As Al and Rose walked away, descending the church steps, Dorsey dug into his pocket to retrieve the snapshot. Dressed in coat and tie, Martin Dorsey sat at the head of the table, his glass raised in a holiday toast. Russie sat to his left, wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a dark green tie. Neither one—neither the old man nor Russie—ever mentioned it, or any other get-together that might have taken place, except for when the old man slipped Russie a five for a new wax job on his car. The old man must have it in him, he thought. Look at him: one hell of a picture, and it never made its way into a newspaper or election brochure.
The heavy oak church door behind Dorsey opened and Father Melcic stepped out, pulling at the hem of his black cassock to keep it from catching as the door closed. Against the cold, he wore a heavy sweater of matching black. Taking Dorsey’s hand, he offered his condolences. “Nice thing you and the others did, arranging for the memorial service. Wish I could have done more for you, but with no proof of the deceased being Catholic, there was only so far I could go. But it was a very good thing you did. Most indigents go from the morgue to the grave without a blessing.”
“He was no indigent,” Dorsey said, his voice carrying a sting. “He had a roof over his head that he paid the rent on each month. The guy worked all his life and had a pension coming from the county. He was just alone.”
“My misunderstanding,” Father Melcic said in an even voice. “Still, it was a nice thing. I suppose you’re waiting for your friend?”
“My friend just left. In the back of a hearse.”
The priest looked at Dorsey and shook his head. “You feel bad, I know. But I was referring to the fellow who is still inside.” Father Melcic again shook his head and walked off.
Dorsey stepped into the vestibule, ticking off a list of possible mourners, wondering who he and Al had forgotten. None of the names caused a stir as he worked his way through the bar patrons and Carson Street people who might have known Russie. County workers were out too, he thought. Russie had been retired for years.
Dorsey slipped through the swinging doors into the church proper and spotted a man who had not been there before, kneeling in one of the front rows near the altar, far to the left and near the side door. He wore a trenchcoat with the collar turned up, leaving only his bald pate exposed. Dorsey started down the center aisle, walking softly, respecting the man’s prayers. When Dorsey was halfway down the aisle, the man blessed himself, rose to his feet, and began moving to the far end of the pew. Dorsey was somewhat surprised; he had not expected the man to be so short. Stepping out into the side aisle, the man made a half turn toward the altar and genuflected. Only then did Dorsey see the gray and white of the beard and the silver wire-frame eyeglasses.
“Jancek!”
Dorsey watched the priest jump at the sound of his voice and quickly turn to face him. As recognition worked its way across Father Jancek’s face, Dorsey started forward, sliding sideways through a pew, careful not to trip over the kneeler. Backpedaling, Father Jancek made for the side door, reaching backward for the door handle. He went through the door as Dorsey reached the aisle.
Sprinting to the door, Dorsey seethed, outraged at the desecration. No cameras, no press release, he thought, pushing open the exit. There’s no mileage to get out of this, no chance to show his piety and his ability to pray for the enemy’s casualties. Dorsey chugged down the steps to the sidewalk and spotted Father Jancek climbing into the rear seat of a worn and rusted Chrysler. He watched as the Chrysler screeched away from the curb toward an intersection, where it blew through a stop sign and turned right, disappearing onto Carson.
Standing at the curb, Dorsey wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand and pulled at his tie. “Fuckin’ bastard round-collar. The fuck is he doin’?” He spat into the gutter. Helps the deceased become the deceased, and he wants the honor of saying the requiem. Dorsey shook his shoulders to work out the hatred, rolling his head to loosen the neck muscles. Satisfied, he gathered his coat around him and smoothed the lapels. It was then he felt a gentle yet firm nudge at the base of his spine.
“Slowly, very slowly.”
The gunman, Jesus Christ, the gunman. Dorsey recognized the smooth southern voice, free of the hard edge of a northern city. He made a cautious half-turn and faced the black man who had sent Damjani and his partner packing. Sent ’em packing, he thought, after Russie was face down in the slush. The gunman worked a wide smile across his face, exposing a gold-capped tooth, just left of center. He was as tall as Dorsey but slender. Dorsey likened his skin tone to well-polished black marble.
“Hell of a gun you got there,” Dorsey said, looking down at the automatic, its barrel pointed just to the right of his coat’s center seam. Stay with it, he told himself, stay calm and play it out. As if there was a choice. “No Saturday-night special, right?”
“That’s true,” the gunman said. “Forty-five. It’ll get you through the whole week.”
A dark late-model Riviera pulled up to the curb and its black driver slipped across the front seat and pushed open the passenger door. “Hop in,” the gunman said, pushing Dorsey inside with the gun barrel.
“Thought you were sent to look after me.” The gunman had climbed into the backseat and Dorsey addressed him through the rearview mirror.
“The other night,” the gunman said, “I was lookin’ after you. Today I’m fetchin’ you.”
The Riviera cruised across the Birmingham bridge, away from South Side. In the rearview Dorsey watched the gunman, pistol hanging loosely in his hand, and wondered if the Chrysler carrying Father Jancek had just taken the same route. Well, Dorsey, at least you get to ride in a nicer car. Jancek or Stockman, either one, sent two guys to crack your skull and the strong-arm man in the backseat pulls you out of the fire. Now the same strong-arm man is the snare in the trap baited with the priest. You’re the detective in this car, so where’s the logic? Tell us how it all comes together.
“I’m meeting the priest, huh?” Dorsey asked.
“Sure, if that’s what you want.” The gunman peered out the window and down at the river. “Headed for the Hill. You ever hear this one, Dorsey? This is supposed to be the longest bridge in the world. Goes from Poland to Africa. Polacks in South Side, niggers on the Hill. A white guy told it to me. But I like it.”
At the foot of the bridge, the driver, silent and concentrating on the road, pushed the accelerator, and the Riviera roared through the intersection and up a steep grade. Dorsey watched the streets go from mean to worse, block after block of gutted buildings and collapsing wooden homes, some with Insulbrick hanging in sheets from the walls. Between the buildings were weed-covered lots with paths beaten through them. City weeds, Dorsey thought, the kind that look eternally gray and stand seven feet tall. Excellent spots for dumping stolen cars, moving junk, or just taking a wine-drunk piss. And Father Jancek’s old parish, the black one, is nearby. Dorsey’s palms went wet and clammy, and he tried to convince himself that he was safe. That whatever this was he’d come out in one piece. The media coverage, it makes you invulnerable. Your picture’s been all over the papers and the tube. You turn up dead, and the only suspects are the priest, Personal Injury, and the Movement. But who says you’re going to turn up? Think about it. Might be different if you just disappeared. No body, no crime, and no charges. And it blows over when the cops get tired of looking. My God. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.
The Riviera went left onto Centre Avenue, the driver handling the steering wheel with just the tip of a finger. Thick through the shoulders and thicker yet at the waist, he wore a slouch cap with the visor pulled low. Dorsey wondered if he was armed but realized it made no difference. He knows you won’t make a move when the car slows for a turn, which it hasn’t. Or if we have to stop for a red light. Must be one bad son of a bitch in the back seat.
They went another two blocks along Centre, and Dorsey’s pulse quickened with each black face and boarded window they passed. The driver made a fast right and then an even quicker left into an alley running parallel to Centre. The Riviera pulled over by the rear door of a building facing Centre, the driver’s-side tires resting on the curb. The driver killed the engine and struggled out from behind the steering wheel.
“This is it.” The gunman tapped Dorsey’s shoulder with the gun barrel. “Gotta go inside.”
Dorsey stepped out onto the asphalt, and although the gunman was a few steps behind, he could feel the gun on him as surely as he felt the cold wind cutting across his face. There’ll be no running, he assured himself. This has to be played out; make a move only if it looks like the worst is going to happen. Like begging on your knees.
The driver opened a steel security door and ushered Dorsey inside and up a flight of steps, the gunman trailing behind. Dorsey jumped at the sound of the steel door slamming shut and the smell of rotting wood and corroding plaster assaulted his nose. Dorsey remembered the smell from a thousand suspect roundups in milltown slums where the heat source was a cheap open-flame gas burner.
At the top of the steps was a second steel door, and the gunman reached past Dorsey to unlock it. The lock snapped crisply and the gunman forced Dorsey forward. “Watch your feet,” the gunman said. “Gotta step up.”
Dorsey found himself in a small windowless office with a third steel door at the far wall. Paneled in imitation wood, the room held well-polished desk of dark wood, matching swivel chair, and two cushioned visitor’s chairs facing the desk. Diplomas hung on the wall behind the desk, but before Dorsey could read the name of the diplomate, the gunman pushed him into the first of the visitor’s chairs. The gunman rested on the edge of the desk, squarely in front of Dorsey, blocking his view of the diplomas. Dorsey wondered if it was intentional and came to the conclusion that everything this man did was intentional.
“What’s it gonna be?” Dorsey asked, hoping to discern his fate. “The priest, he comes in and gives me the Last Rites, then you take it from there? That’s how it’s starting to look. From my seat, anyway.”
The gunman shook his head and partially suppressed a smile, sending tremors up Dorsey’s spine. My God, he thought, maybe you’re right. This guy can pull it off. Complete detachment when he needs it, like with Russie. For Russie to get it was okay, this guy could stand for that. Two feet away and he could let it pass, because he was paid to keep an eye only on you.
Dorsey heard the door behind him open, and the gunman rose from the desk and trained the automatic on Dorsey’s chest. Gripping the chair arms, white-knuckled, Dorsey watched as a tall, stocky black man, immaculately dressed in a suit the color of charcoal ash, rounded the desk. The ends of his jacket sleeves showed French cuffs with gold cuff links. He tugged at the tops of his pant legs when he prepared to sit. Dorsey figured him to have gained fifteen pounds since the photo was taken, and the gray had spread beyond his temples. The diplomas, now plainly in sight, confirmed it: he was sitting in the office of Louis Preach.
“Please, you should relax.” Preach smiled. “It’s been a tough day for you so far. Said good-bye to a friend and now this. I regret it, I really do, but it was necessary. I gave you plenty of invitations, over the phone and in the mail.” Preach smiled again. “But you never called. I felt rejected.”
“You’ve got my attention now,” Dorsey said. “Using the priest like that, how could you fail?”
Preach’s face took on a puzzled look, the lines of his forehead deepening, and he turned to the gunman, now positioned at the side wall. Pushing himself away from the paneling, the gunman came to the desk and crouched down to speak in Preach’s ear. Dorsey watched Preach as he listened, wondering if the gunman was passing along last-minute instructions. And if he is, Dorsey was sure, the instructions were the joint product of Jancek and Personal Injury.
“Sure about this, Dexter?” Preach said as the gunman retreated to the wall. “The priest was there? And Dorsey, he thinks he’s here to see him?” Preach turned to Dorsey, a grin working its way across his face. And then, studying Dorsey, he threw back his head and laughed so loudly it bounced off the office walls.
“Oh, Jesus, you think Father Jancek brought you here?” Preach asked.
“Yeah, I think the priest brought me here. Cut the bullshit.” Dorsey found some of his fear turning to anger at being the obvious butt of a joke between Preach and Dexter, who was shaking with laughter too. “You enjoy your work, that’s nice. But don’t jack me around, okay?”
“Dorsey,” Preach managed to say between laughs, “I didn’t bring you here to see Father Jancek. You’re here so I can show you how to nail him.”
Preach wiped his face with a monogrammed handkerchief and started to send the gunman into the adjacent office for a bottle he said was in the secretary’s desk. “Dex, hold on a minute,” Preach said. “Mr. Dorsey’s a beer drinker. Hustle across to the Circle for a six-pack.”
Dorsey watched Dexter slip out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him. “Beer, huh? You know a little bit about me.”
“Secondhand knowledge is all it is. Like I said, you wouldn’t return my calls.” Preach rose for a moment to shove the handkerchief into his rear pocket, then settled back into his chair. “After Dexter gets back, I’m going to send him out again. You don’t carry any armor, and if you take off—well, these streets are top-heavy with what journalists used to call angry young black men, the dispossessed. You’re much better off here. We’ll talk; then you’ll be taken home. By the way, if you want, there’s a bathroom just out the door and to the left.”
Cautious and weary, Dorsey rose and crossed the room, watching Preach over his shoulder. The next room was a reception area furnished with a secretary’s desk and two worn sofas. Like the inner office, it was without windows, and the door facing Centre Avenue was the same steel make as the other. Dorsey found the bathroom and concluded it was a closet with plumbing as he wedged himself between toilet and sink. Leaning over the bowl, he took a long and furious fear piss, his anxiety lessening. Next he filled the sink with cold water and dunked his face, killing the heat in his facial nerves. He wiped his face with a paper towel and returned to the inner office.
“Security doors and no windows.” Dorsey settled into his chair. “You’ll scare away business, along with keeping the burglars out.”
“Too often,” Preach said, “they’re one and the same.”
The outer steel door slammed and Dexter entered the office dangling a six-pack of Budweiser from its plastic ring. Preach motioned for him to give two cans to Dorsey. “He’ll drink fast. He’s had a shock.”
Dorsey took a can in each hand and popped the snap-tops with his thumbs. “That’s right, a trying day it has been.” He took a long pull from the can in his left hand. The beer hit his stomach fast and cold, soothing the tremors in his knees.
Dexter placed the remaining cans on the corner of the desk and left. Preach moved them onto the blotter and used his elbow to wipe at the wet ring left on the wood. “Now that you’re more composed, let’s talk about Father Jancek. You’re getting closer, I know you are. But I also know, as sure as my face is black, you haven’t got him yet.”
“And what is it I’m supposed to be getting him for?”
“Of course,” Preach said. “You don’t trust me. And why should you? You think I’ve thrown in with the priest.”
“The two of you, you look really good together.” Dorsey took another long pull on his beer and wiped his face on his sleeve. “Together, you two are downright photogenic.”
Preach leaned back into his chair and spread his arms. “A photo opportunity is what it’s called. “Pictures were taken, that’s right. But there’s a few years on them now, and times change. Father Jancek and myself—our little fallout was, I think, two years ago.”
Calmed by the beer, Dorsey began pulling his thoughts together, hoping to initiate instead of reacting. Talk to me, he thought. He’ll say the words, Dorsey told himself, and you’ll shove them through the strainer to glean the truth from the bullshit, if any. “What’s the matter?” Dorsey said. “Won’t Father Jancek let you join him in praying at the steel-mill gates? You may have missed another photo opportunity. While they load you into the sheriff’s wire-window bus.”
“Oh, my delegation and myself, we were there at the beginning.” Preach flashed the grin again, but this time it was much shrewder, and Dorsey watched for a knuckle ball. “But a year or two ago Father Jancek began seeing things in a different light. A different shade, perhaps.” Preach pointed at Dorsey. “Think about it, just take a minute. You’ve been to one of the rallies, and you can’t tell me you haven’t seen the television. How many black faces have you seen? One, maybe two, if the good father is in an expansive mood on that particular day. Movements are coalitions. And, as is customary, to attract one specific group you may have to drop another. In the case of Movement Together, the dropped group is black. Disenfranchised, that’s what we are.”
Dorsey finished the beer and reached to place the empty on the blotter. There had been a few blacks in the union hall in Midland, he remembered, but they were fly shit in the sugarbowl. And the media-search photos in the manila folder. The earlier ones were pretty dark, but the tone lightened as the years rolled by. The demagogue develops.
“If you’re on the outs with the priest, like you say, why was he willing to play out his role in church today?”
“Right now,” Preach said, “you’ll find this hard to swallow, but he wasn’t there by my design. Pure coincidence. Dexter was told to get you here today, that’s all. As I say, you may not believe that. But let me set my cards out on the table by telling a story.”
Dorsey finished the second beer and took another from the desk, jerking the can away from the plastic ring. He nodded for Preach to begin.
“I’ve known Father Jancek for some time now,” Preach said. “Since he came to Saint Agnes. Me, I’m not Catholic, guess you could say I’m a part-time Baptist, but we met through the community action groups. When he was at the head of the hunger and housing marches, I was one rank behind. I saw him wrap himself around politicians, and believe me, I loved the things he could accomplish. He never changed the city’s social structure, but here and there, and maybe just temporarily, things got a little better. Job programs, help for the elderly and shut-ins, assistance to single mothers. Reagan’s doing his best to undo it all, but it was better.”
Dorsey nodded. “So you knew him way back when.”
“And maybe not so way back,” Preach said. “Like I said, it’s only been the last two years that he and I have been on the outs. Me and my people were in on the ground floor when the Movement was formed, when the economy nose-dived. We were pretty well organized around here, and to be honest, a lot of it was Father Jancek’s doing. We were his first power base. But the Movement, it had to grow. New groups had to be attracted, enticed—union locals up and down the river valleys. And those guys like white faces best.”
To Dorsey, it had the ring of truth. More than possible, he thought; damned likely. It’s skin against skin in those towns, not class economics. And nobody there wants to do well if doing well leaves you with a nigger next door.
“It was a union local up in Brackenridge that finally did us in,” Preach said. “Oh, sure, we were being nudged out before that. Little by little, white faces replaced the black ones in the committees. But this local up in Brackenridge, Christ, they were fat. Big and rich, with bank accounts that would make you drool. They wanted to be part of Movement Together, and Movement Together wanted them. But this local, the head men didn’t want coffee mixing with the cream. And that’s when the last black member of the executive committee, me, lost out in a special election.”
“When you lost out?” Dorsey returned Preach’s sly smile. “I thought your efforts were all in the service of your people.”
“Me, my people: one and the same,” Preach said. “My people, they need success stories, role models. So I should be one. But get this straight. We’ve been disenfranchised and I want that changed.”
And the priest takes a tumble, Dorsey told himself, and Movement Together goes flat. And a new leader emerges. Louis Preach and his well-organized black faction at the center of a new coalition.
“So things get a little crazy for a while,” Preach said, as if reading Dorsey’s thoughts. “There’ll be a lot of splinter groups looking for a vocal, high-profile leader. I can be very vocal when necessary.”
“And you’ll be very powerful,” Dorsey said. “And there’s more than one congressional seat up for grabs next year. I hear your local man plans on stepping down.”
“I’ve never been one to be locked into one goal,” Preach said, “and it’s an interesting possibility. But regardless, you have my reasons for wanting to help you; we now understand each other. That’s good.”
“So how do I get Jancek?”
“You’re going to pay a visit to a man I know,” Preach said. “A man who was in on the planning, a man who sat at the table when it was all put together. It’s arranged for you to talk to him tomorrow, late afternoon.”
“And where’s this going to take place?”
“Huntingdon State Penitentiary,” Preach said. “He’s doing three to five.”