“Tells us nothing,” Kling said.
Ollie looked at him.
Carella braced himself for whatever was coming. With Ollie, you never knew. But nothing came. Ollie merely sighed heavily. The sigh could have meant “How come I always get stuck with stupid rookies?” (which Kling certainly wasn’t) or alternatively, “How come it’s raining on a day when we have so much to do?”
“How much time can you guys give me today?” he asked.
“The Loot says we’re at your disposal.”
“Really? Who’s gonna take care of the old lady in the bathtub?” Ollie asked, as if he gave a damn who’d stabbed her in the eye. Carella recognized the question as rhetorical. Kling didn’t know what they were talking about. “Here’s what I’d like to do today,” Ollie said, and began ticking the points off on his left hand, starting with the pinky. “One,I’llgo chase down this guy who was on the follow spot when Henderson caught it Monday morning, nail down what he saw, what he heard, and so on. Nobody leaves alive. Next,” ticking it off on his ring finger, “I wantyouguys to talk to the Reverend Gabriel Foster about a little fracas him and Henderson got into just a week or so ago.”
“Why us?” Carella asked.
“Let’s say the rev and me don’t get along too well, ah yes.”
“Gee, I wonder why.”
“What kind of fracas?” Kling asked.
“Name calling, fists flying, like that.”
“Where was this?”
“A Town Hall debate. Hizzoner was there, too,thatshmuck.”
“You don’t really think Foster had anything to do with Henderson’s murder, do you?” Carella said.
“I think where there’s a nigger in the woodpile, you smoke him out,” Ollie said.
Kling looked at him.
“Something?” Ollie said.
“I don’t like that expression.”
“Well, gee, shove it up your ass,” Ollie said.
Carella stepped in at once. “Where do we see you later?”
“You mean when shall we three meet again?” Ollie said. “Ah yes. How about right here, back at the ranch, let’s say three o’clock.” He looked Kling in the eye and said, “I hope you know Henderson was for stiffening drug laws.”
“So?”
“So some people in the so-called black community might’ve thought he was trying to send their so-called brothers to jail.”
“So?”
“Targeting persons of color, they might have thought,” Ollie said.
“What some people up here call profiling. You ought to keep that in mind when you’re talking to him.”
“Thanks, we’ll keep it in mind,” Kling said.
“What I’m suggesting is Foster’s a well-known Negro agitator and rabble rouser. Maybe he got himself all agitated and aroused Monday morning.”
“Or maybe not,” Carella said.
“Or maybe not,” Ollie agreed. “It’s a free country, and nobody’s hassling the man.”
“Except us,” Kling said.
“Asking pertinent questions ain’t hassling. Unless you’re a Negro, of course, and then everybody in the whole fucking world is hassling you. Foster’s been around the block once or twice, so watch your ass, he’s slippery as a wet condom. Then again, they all are. This is where the big bad city begins, Sonny Boy, right here in the Eight- Eight, the home of the jig and the land of the spic.”
“One more time, Ollie,” Kling said.
“What the fuck’s with you?” Ollie said, genuinely puzzled.
“See you at three,” Carella said, and took Kling’s elbow and steered him out of the squadroom.
Behind them, Ollie called, “You new in the job, or what?”
IT OCCURRED TO CARELLAthat it had been raining the last time he’d visited the Reverend Gabriel Foster here at the First Baptist Church. This time he took an umbrella from the car. In this city, you never saw a uniformed cop carrying an umbrella and you hardly ever saw a detective carrying one, either. That was because law enforcement officers could walk between the drops. Walking between the drops now, Carella hunched with Kling under the large black umbrella, and they splashed their way together to the front doors of the church.
The First Bap was housed in a white clapboard structure wedged between a pair of six-story tenements whose red-brick facades had been recently sandblasted. There were sections of Diamondback that long ago had been sucked into the quagmire of hopeless poverty, where any thoughts of gentrification were mere pipe dreams. But St. Sebastian Avenue, here in the Double-Eight between Seventeenth and Twenty-first, was the hub of a thriving mini-community not unlike a self-contained small town. Along this stretch of avenue, you could find good restaurants, markets brimming with prime cuts of meat and fresh produce, clothing stores selling designer labels, repair shops for shoes, bicycles, or umbrellas, a new movie complex with six screens, even a fitness center.
Carella rang the doorbell.
The middle of the three doors opened.
A slight black man wearing a dark suit and glasses peered out at them.
“Come in out of the rain,” he said.
Inside, rain battered the roof of the church, and only the palest light trickled through stained-glass windows. The pews echoed themselves row upon row, silent and empty. Carella closed the umbrella.
“You’re policemen, aren’t you?” the man said.
“Detective Carella,” he said.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Yes.”
“I remember. Did you want to see the Reverend?”
“If he’s here.”
“I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you. I’m Deacon Ainsworth,” he said, and offered his hand.
Both detectives shook hands with him.
“Come with me,” he said, and led them down a side aisle to a door to the right of the altar. The door opened onto a narrow passageway lined with windows on the street side. They walked past the windows to another door at the far end. Ainsworth knocked. A voice within said, “Yes, come in.” Ainsworth opened the door.
According to police records, the Reverend Gabriel Foster’s birth name was Gabriel Foster Jones. He’d changed it to Rhino Jones when he enjoyed a brief career as a heavyweight boxer, and then settled on Gabriel Foster when he began preaching. Foster considered himself a civil rights activist. The police considered him a rabble rouser, an opportunistic self-promoter, and a race racketeer. His church, in fact, was listed in the files as a “sensitive location,” departmental code for anyplace where the uninvited presence of the police might cause a race riot.
Six feet, two inches tall, with the wide shoulders and broad chest of the heavyweight fighter he once had been, his eyebrows still ridged with scar tissue, Foster at the age of forty-nine and fast approaching fifty still looked as if he could knock your average contender on his ass in thirty seconds flat. He extended his right hand the moment the detectives entered the rectory. Grinning, he said, “Detective Carella! Nice to see you again.”
The men shook hands. Carella was mindful of the fact that the last time he was here, Foster hadn’t been at all happy to see him.
“This is Detective Kling,” he said.
“Nice to meet you,” Kling said.
“I know why you’re here,” Foster said. “You’re shaking the tree, am I right?”
“We’re here because the last time you and Henderson debated, it ended in a fist fight,” Carella said.
“Well, that’s not quite true,” Foster said.
“It’s our understanding of what happened.”
