‘No. Absolutely not.’ She got up to leave but hesitated. ‘I’m so disappointed in you, Ben. I thought you might actually be someone.’
27
The Calvary Pentecostal Church of God in Christ had begun its life as the Temple Beth Adonai. That name was still visible, impressed in the architrave above the main entrance. Other vestiges remained. Six-point stars woven into the wrought-iron fence. Stained-glass windows, now protected by steel grates, depicting Old Testament stories: Adam and Eve leaving the garden; the sacrifice of Isaac; Moses receiving the tablets on Mount Sinai. The overlay of Christian symbols was relatively impermanent. You had the sense that, if the lost Jews of Mission Flats ever decided to return from the suburbs, their temple could be restored in just a few hours.
I came here directly from my meeting with Caroline. The last few days, I had made this church part of my rounds, part of the hunt for Harold Braxton. But now I came here for a different reason. I had nowhere else to go, no place to think. It was hard not to think of the church as a sanctuary in the archaic legal sense, a sacred place where fugitives like me were immune from arrest.
I entered the building through a mammoth wooden door. Inside was a lobby and then the worship space, which soared to an onion-shaped dome — a bit of eastern European exotica that again recalled the building’s original tenants. Water-stained and veined with cracks, the dome had the power to stop you cold.
My hand touched each of the benches as I moved down the aisle. I went through the habitual motions of looking for Braxton. I tried doors — offices, storage rooms, vestry, anyplace that could serve as a hideout. As usual, the building appeared deserted. All the rooms had a stale, dusty smell, suggesting they had not been used, or even aired out, in quite a while.
I sat down in a pew. There was an urge to let go and cry, and an equally powerful urge to fight back, to prove my innocence. I slumped and let my head loll back against the bench. On Sunday mornings, no doubt, bored little kids studied the cracks in the dome, traced them as they threaded upward, only to end abruptly or merge into other, deeper cracks.
I became aware that I was no longer alone.
At the back of the church, a kid stared at me. He was thickset and tall, very dark-skinned, with a showy red bandanna tied around his head like a skullcap. Not Braxton. This was a kid I’d never seen before. He stood with arms crossed, watching me.
His eyes flickered up to the dome.
‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
No response.
I came out of the pew and down the red-carpeted aisle. The kid was already gone. I raced out to the church steps. He had disappeared.
Back inside, I stood in the spot vacated by this visitor and retraced his glance up into the dome. There was, I saw, a ring around the base of it, a feature I’d never noticed before. It dawned on me that there must be a way up there. There must be a way to reach the dome to clean or paint it or to replace a bulb. It was the only place I hadn’t looked.
In an office off the hallway, I found a secretary stuffing envelopes. She asked, ‘May I help you?’
I identified myself as a cop, even flipped open my badge holder to make it official. ‘Is there a way up to that dome?’
‘Why would you want to go up there?’ she asked, bewildered.
I told her, honestly enough, ‘I’m not sure.’ She led me to a staircase behind a locked door.
In better circumstances, I would have called in my position, just in case. That was obviously impossible now. Yet confronting Braxton alone, if indeed he was up there, was foolish. Where was John Kelly? Where was he constantly disappearing to? I wrote down Gittens’s name and told the secretary, ‘If I’m not back in ten minutes, call this number and tell him Ben Truman is here, alright?’ It was up to Gittens. He could leave me here or come, as he saw fit. At this point, it was all the precaution I could muster.
Up and up. Up a staircase that switchbacked six times. At the top, a narrow door, so narrow you had to turn your shoulders to avoid the door frame.
Out onto a catwalk that circled the base of the dome.
Very high, with a handrail set at thigh level — too low to be seen from the seats below — and too low to put your hand on when you looked over the edge. The church floor was far below — two, three stories at least. A red carpet ran up the center aisle and spread out over the altar.
Nearby on the catwalk, a pile of bedding — no, just clothes bundled on the floor.
And on the opposite side of the dome was Harold Braxton, wide-eyed, gaping at me.
I pulled my gun. Two times in one week. Cops on TV always draw their guns. I racked the slide. The gun felt heavy, foreign. I’m on TV. My own TV show.
I looked down at the gun in my hand. Then across at Braxton.
There was a hollow flump.
The sound echoed. It was inside my head and outside my head. Flump. A sound but no pain. No sensation at all.
I was down on the catwalk. Dusty brown linoleum. My cheek was pressed against it. I had not fallen. The film had skipped a frame somehow — I was standing, then I was on the floor.
I looked up at June Veris — enormous in a red T-shirt — a great leonine head, pale, sleepy-eyed. He was holding some sort of truncheon that reminded me of Kelly’s nightstick. ‘Don’t you look at me, motherfucka. Don’t you fuckin’ look at me!’
I kept looking at him.
‘What’d I just tell you? Look the fuck down!’
I looked down. Rolling my head started a dull, pressurized pain. The brain sloshing in its shell like an egg yolk, quivering, threatening to split the delicate membrane. I touched the back of my head. My hair was damp.
Veris said, ‘What do we do now, cousin?’
I looked up.
Another sound — not pain, but sound — whoom — reverberating in and around my skull.
There was a strange calm. Dreamy. I analyzed the sound. It was recognizably the truncheon striking my skull. I wanted to remember that sound.
This time the blow drove my head forward. Drove my chin into my chest.
My body coiled, reflexed — my face burned along the floor until it loomed out over the edge of the catwalk and the red church floor stretched three stories below. I jerked my head back.
Veris again: ‘I tol’ you, look the fuck down!’
I looked down at the floor. The egg yolk trembled. Not pain but something more remote — the objective awareness of injury — a rumor of pain.
Veris’s hand rifled through my pockets, extracted my wallet and badge holder. ‘What you want to do now, cousin?’
A voice said: ‘Leave him. It’s okay, you go.’
I turned my head to see Veris trundle off, squeeze through the door and disappear. His footsteps echoed on the staircase.
Harold Braxton was holding my gun. ‘Serious piece,’ he mused. It was a nine-millimeter Beretta. He dropped the magazine out of the handle, then racked the gun to clear the chamber. The cartridge fell over the edge and landed on the carpet far below us with a soft sound.
There was a brief gap — like sleep — then I awoke to Braxton asking, ‘Why’d you come here?’
‘The DA wants you picked up.’
‘You all there is?’
I nodded. The egg yolk rolled, shivered, but held together, although now the pain was very real. I decided to keep my head perfectly still. ‘Yeah, just me.’
‘You really from Maine?’
