C H A P T E R • 41
“He’s in God’s hands now,” Reverend Garrison said to an aged couple, stooped in their Sunday best. “We will only say the words on Wednesday to help us acknowledge as a community what you already know so well.”
He turned to me. “Pearl Washington, I want you to meet Clarence Jackson’s mother and father. This is Pearl Washington, now publisher of her father’s Harlem Journal newspaper.”
I reached out my two hands, one to each, and thought to say, “I’m so sorry. It’s like the reverend said, we are devastated to lose our precious future.”
I didn’t tell them I knew how they felt because my father just died. I hate it when people do that because then it’s about them and the dying and the grieving is personal. I also didn’t tell them I was the one who found their boy dead.
“Thank you,” his mother said, and they left the office holding hands.
Gary closed the door to the vestibule sounds and anybody who might be curious about what he was up to. His bow was blue, tied under his stupid beard.
“That was sad. Heavy’s parents are so old.”
“I’ll need to talk to Pearl alone, Deacon,” he said. And the man who was busy at a table piled with blueprints on the other side of the office left without a word.
“They had Clarence late and he has been quite a handful. But we thought he was coming around. And now this. If you’re writing a story, make sure and write about Clarence being an artist and funny. I talked to him the day he died. We talked about how hard it was for him and how much support he was going to need. But he didn’t say it was life and death.”
“You talked to Heavy? Where?”
“He called me but he wouldn’t say where he was.”
He motioned me toward a group of chairs as he answered the phone and said something into it I couldn’t make out. His rosewood desk caught my attention. I think I know why he had replaced the huge oak monster that used to take up almost half the space. Sitting behind his father’s desk would probably have felt like sitting behind my father’s—like our feet wouldn’t touch the floor.
“If you have a question, ask me now. I need to get this over with. Sunday is not my day of rest.”
“What I want to know about is Viola and Ceel money laundering. I saw cash in your office and I found wrapped bills that had to have been withdrawn from the bank. And I also saw another list of bank withdrawals, but from companies with music names like Louis Armstrong Associates. Fake companies. They were money laundering and that would require a cash business to channel the money through. Was that you?”
“If you’ve got Viola, you’ve got your cash business. My deacons and board make sure I don’t have access to money. Our church organization is structured to keep me from temptation. And my money is not just what I get out of the baskets on Sunday. It’s also government and corporate philanthropic money. I have to keep a shit-load of records.”
“So you knew about it.”
“I’m not admitting it even happened” he said.
“We both know it did.”
“It’s your job to spread rumors, not mine,” he said.
“The Journal does not print lies. That’s one of those urban myths,” I said. “Like the myth about your bank supporting community businesses.”
“But we do. When nobody else will. We’re just not in the business of throwing money away.”
You don’t get one of those bank jobs by running off at the mouth. He stopped. “When will this story come out?”
“In Tuesday’s special edition about the bank with follow-up stories in the regular edition on Thursday.”
“Ceel used to say she wanted to have your life,” he said.
“Don’t tell me that. That’s terrible.”
“She was going about it all wrong.”
“What do you mean? What would be a good way to go about having somebody else’s life?”
“That’s not what I meant. But it’s an excellent question,” he said. “Harlem is getting ready to be a destination. The white boys can’t do it without us and we can’t let them take it from us. Pay attention. Ceel isn’t the only one. In fact, Viola and your father were expanding the Kit Kat. It’s a jazz spot that already pulls the downtown crowd. I heard she was there at the hospital with you when Captain Bailey was shot. That’s all right. She made your father laugh.”
“He loved to laugh.”
“And she played the hell out of the damsel in distress,” he said.
Gary’s image was sure and annoying.
He paced. And when he turned to me, he said, “Viola got Cecelia in more trouble than they could get out of. She was trying to extricate herself when she was killed.”
“Extricate just herself? What about Viola?” I asked. “Did her partner agree it was time to give up all that money?”
“Viola and I both disagreed and tried to get her to stop calling attention to the bank. It was foolish and dangerous.”
I hated that I had to keep the notebook in my bag.
“Cecelia had a fiduciary responsibility. She broke several confidentiality agreements with these leaks to the newspaper and these charges. She was on my church board and I was on the bank board. We were interconnected in so many ways.”
“And that’s how she figured it out.”
“She got it wrong. And you have stolen property. I’d be careful if I were you. I’m warning you. The bank’s board of directors is not going to sit still for this.”
“If you don’t tell me something else, I’ve got me a story.”
“You can’t do this. Especially not now. Not this week. We need to be sure the bank looks as good as it is.”
“Why not now?”
“Off the record?”
“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want in the paper.”
“Then we don’t have anything else to talk about.”
He pushed a button on his desk. The big deacon came in and Gary told him, “See Miss Washington out.”
I stood against the wall in the corridor and was writing down some impressions and images while they were fresh. Until the presence of someone who had stopped in front of me caused me to raise my attention from the notebook to the space my body was inhabiting.
“I’m Janice. Obsidian’s,” pause, “friend,” she said.
“I’m Pearl.” I gave her a semblance of a smile.
She raised a perfect eyebrow. “Of course, I knew you were Pearl. Thank you for being there at Harlem Hospital with him. I couldn’t get out of my commitment and get a flight back until this morning and I hate that I was away when he needed me.”
“He’s better, mending, it seems,” I said.
“Yes. He’s coming home from the hospital today. I’m going over after church. I’ll tell him we met.”
“Yes, do tell him that.”
I watched her walk away and wondered if there was something else I should have said. And, if so, what it might have been. Perhaps my best over-the-top Hollywood scream.
“She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” I jumped but didn’t give the reverend the satisfaction of seeing my face and walked the other way.