Walter Mosley - Parishioner

Ecks hoped, for Lester’s sake, that those leather restraints were strong and well tied. The youth was pulling against them with all his might and hate and anger.

“Think about it, Lester. You lost your inheritance when you killed the Lehmans. Why would somebody hire Cylla’s expensive law firm to help your sorry Aryan ass outta jail? Nobody does anything for nuthin’; you know that. So there’s got to be a payday somewhere. Got to.”

“You don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah, son. I do. I really do. I know that the state’s got a whole drawer full of evidence that will put you right back in. Somebody paid thirty thousand dollars for a clear shot-plain and simple.”

The Harlem gangster had hit the high notes of Lester’s young life. He hated his family, remembered in his veins the humiliation of his kidnapping, knew for a fact that he was being set up by the lawyers and whoever hired them. But what choice did he have? He was doing life times four for a crime he couldn’t deny. Even a day of freedom and a chance to run was worth whatever waited for him.

Ecks saw all this in the seemingly vacant blue eyes that had made Lester such a prize when he was a toddler.

“Why?” Lester asked after traveling the entire wrong-way path of his life up until that moment.

“Same as always,” Ecks opined. “What’s true for every soldier, cop, workingman, and thug-worth more dead than alive.”

“And so you come in here and wanna save me?”

“I don’t give a fuck about you, Les. Not one fart in a bean factory. Only reason I’m even tellin’ you what I know is that it’s the right thing to do. Like puttin’ a bullet in a stray dog’s head after a car accident-to end his sufferin’. I know you not gonna help me, man. But I had to be here and you asked why so I told you. After it’s over, Cylla here will give you the names of the three couples who might be your real parents. Maybe at least you’ll know why you did what you did. You couldn’t help yourself, brother. I mean, you just like some windup toy put on the tabletop and let go to run off the side.”

“Fuck you,” Lester said. It was almost a question.

“Naw, man. You the one got fucked in the ass by life. Messed you up so bad that you ain’t never at no time known where you was or why. I’m here to tell you about it. I’m the first person in your whole damn life told you the truth. Pay attention, young man. This ride will not go around for another pass.”

Lester Lehman sat back in his chair, easing up on the restraints that held him. He looked into his enemy’s eyes and saw the truth there. He wanted to ask a thousand questions that had been in his mind since he could remember. But he knew that the black man sitting in front of him didn’t care. The truth he shared was more like a bomb than a balm; like a hidden knife waiting on the prison yard-it was aimed at his heart.

“We’re going to take you down to the release room now, Mr. Lehman,” Cylla Pride said. “You’ve heard what my colleague had to say. Would you rather I stop this proceeding?”

“No … no. Let’s get on with it.”

The guards were summoned and Lester was released from his chair. His defiant demeanor was now more subdued, though he still glanced daggers at Ecks when he could. The seven of them traveled down a long wide corridor toward an elevator, which they took six floors down.

They got to a control room maintained by three uniformed sentries watching nine monitors and guarding a door that kept you a prisoner or set you free. A small group of business-suited officials had gathered near the metal door.

Ecks turned his head casually, studying the monitors. He just wanted to see who was out in the hall on the other side waiting for Lester. There might not be anyone there. Winter was in his car outside using his own video camera. It was a long shot, but this would be only the first in a series of attempts to find the man assigned to kill the lost children.

At his second pass Ecks saw the man who was responsible for at least two of the murders committed.

“Is the paperwork in order?” a smallish Hispanic man in a tan jacket asked Cylla.

“The papers have all been filed,” the deacon-lawyer replied.

She handed the little man an envelope, which he opened. He took out a folded sheet of paper and read it through-twice.

“This looks to be in order.”

“One moment,” a voice said from the elevator door.

This was a slender man with an exaggerated Adam’s apple. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a thin undertaker’s tie.

“There’s a holdback,” the emaciated man said. “Mr. Lehman attacked a man with a deadly weapon on prison grounds three months ago. The inquiry means that he must be held over in county jail until the courts here make a ruling.”

“What the fuck?” Lester said.

“Put him back,” the lean bureaucrat said. “He must be held over.”

Ecks didn’t talk to Cylla again that day. He made his way back up with the guards holding Lester and then quickly to the front of the courthouse. He was looking around for the killer but came up empty.

“Brother Ecks,” Winter called.

He was parked at the curb, waving from the window.

Ecks strolled over to his friend.

“I got the shots you wanted, man,” Winter said. “How’d you do?”

“All in all I can’t complain.”

“That’s good, right?”

“That girl you met,” Ecks said, “that Cindy Simpson.”

“What about her?”

“I met a girl too. Her name’s Benicia.”

“She fine?”

“You want to have a double date at Fisherman’s Grotto up there on the PCH?”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Your friend Winter is a delight,” Benicia Torres was saying on the ride back to her apartment on Venice Boulevard.

“What did you think of Cindy?”

“Every time she looked at you her nostrils flared.”

“I didn’t catch that.”

“Winter’s a good friend, isn’t he?” Benicia asked Ecks.

“My best friend died two days ago.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Cancer. That and hard livin’.”

“Are you going to the funeral?”

“No,” Ecks murmured, “I’m not.”

When Benicia heard the pain in that answer she said, “Do my nostrils flare when I look at you, Mr. Noland?”

“I don’t think so.”

“They should.”

“Your nose don’t even know me, girl.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve ever said that’s completely wrong.”

“Is this it?” Ecks asked as he pulled up next to a complex of little cottages. The brown bungalows were arranged in no particular order, like a child’s building blocks forgotten after a day of play.

“It wasn’t only him getting wounded that made my father decide to leave Rio.”

“No?” Ecks felt a quivering in his chest.

“I was young but I was wild too. I’d never stay in school. I would jump out of my window at bedtime and spend the night in the streets.”

“What your old man do?”

“He beat me with a strap until …”

“Until what?”

Benicia peered with her brilliant eyes at Ecks. “Until one night he beat me and the whole time I looked up at him like I’m looking at you. I didn’t cry or make a sound.”

“Damn, girl.”

“Do I frighten you, Egbert?” She laughed.

“So that’s why he put you in a trunk and brought you here?”

“He really was shot. When I heard about it I ran to the hospital and sat by his side for six days. I held his hand and talked to him. And when he woke up I was sitting there wearing a straw hat that he bought me on a Sunday after church. I asked him to stop being a cop and he said that he would if I went to school and made something of myself.”