Walter Mosley - Parishioner

“What are you doing here, Mr. Noland?”

“Deacon.”

“Say what?”

“Deacon Noland of the Interfaith Church of Redemption.” He plucked a blue business card from his breast pocket and handed it to the policeman.

All ninety-six parishioners were deacons. They were given cards with the private line of the church across the bottom. During business hours, and at most other times, there was a secretary named Clyde Pewtersworth who would happily answer any questions about the cardholder.

Xavier smiled. The only legal profession that allowed him to dress like he did in the old days was deacon. He could see that thought come up in the policeman’s eyes.

“What are you doing here … sir?”

“On a mission. One of our members’ father is sick and he’s been asking for his sister-a Miss Sedra Martin. He remembered that she lived in a house at this crossroads here. I’ve come to see if I could find her and let her know about her brother’s condition.”

“Seabreeze City,” the policeman said. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Small town just a little north of Ventura.”

He was racking up points against the impromptu investigation. A deacon from up north named Egbert. This was all he needed-almost.

“Why were you sitting in your car?” the cop asked, handing back the card.

“I just drove up, Officer. The information I had was that there was a house on every corner and that Ms. Martin lived in a brown one. As you can see, the only house here is blue. When I saw what I was faced with I took a moment out to pray that a brown home had been painted blue. I find that prayer often helps.”

The policeman moved half a step to his left and put his hand on the front hood of the classic car. Xavier stopped himself from smiling. He knew that the hood would be warm, proving his story with no real proof.

The cop stared a moment more. No self-respecting law enforcement officer trusted a man in greenish yellow shoes, but the pieces seemed to fit.

“Sorry for the trouble, Deacon Noland. You have a nice day now.”

Crossing the street as the black-and-white cruiser drove off, Xavier thought about Benol. She was the kind of woman he would bed, but only in a hotel. She’d go through the drawers, closets, and elsewhere if she had the run of his home. And at her place he would have felt vulnerable to attack. A woman like that, he thought, could never be trusted.

On the other hand, he knew that if he had the opportunity to be with her that he would take that chance.

As he walked up the stairs of the front porch, he asked himself again why he was there.

The woman who answered the doorbell was younger than Sedra had been when she bought and sold blond children two decades before. She was slight and blond herself, dark blond with green eyes. She was no more than five feet and probably didn’t top a hundred pounds. Her white skin was healthy, not like Lou Baer-Bond’s doughy hide. She smiled at Xavier.

“Yes?”

“I’m looking for a woman named Sedra,” Xavier said easily, feeling once again the seductive seeming honesty of California.

“Sedra Landcombe?”

“That’s her.”

“What do you want with her?”

“I’m here for my cousin, Benol Richards. Twenty-three years ago she had some business dealings with Ms. Landcombe and a man named Welch. She-my cousin, that is-is looking for Welch and thinks that Ms. Landcombe might help.”

“What kind of business?” Even the young woman’s frown seemed friendly and inviting.

“I’m not completely sure. This Welch guy did the actual transactions. It might have been work for some kind of adoption agency.”

The frown deepened.

“And your name is?”

“Noland, Egbert Noland.”

“Why does your cousin want to speak to this man?”

“That’s a private matter that she hasn’t shared with me,” he lied. “But she’s a good woman. I can’t imagine that it’s anything too unpleasant.”

“Why didn’t she come herself?”

“Why are you asking so many questions?” Xavier said.

“Oh … excuse me. I don’t mean to be rude. My name is Doris Milne. I’m Sedra’s niece.”

“Benol is down in Miami. She called me from there and I agreed to look.”

“Come in, Mr. Noland.” Doris took a step backward, allowing Xavier to enter the foyer of the old house.

The walls were painted rose and the floor paved with golden tiles. There was a large healthy fern growing in one corner looming over a generously stuffed carmine chair.

“Have a seat, Mr. Noland,” Sedra Landcombe’s niece offered. “I’ll go see if my aunt can speak to you.”

An angry spasm wrenched through Xavier’s chest, reminding him again that he was a violent man, a killer without much remorse and less reason. He had often felt that it was this immediate willingness to fight and brutalize, more than any other trait, that made him a success in the old neighborhoods.

He reached out and touched the young woman’s shoulder. She turned her head to regard him.

“Thank you,” he said. “Make sure to tell her that it’s about someone involved in the adoption service.”

She smiled and went through a double-wide doorway toward her human-trafficker aunt.

Sitting up straight with his hands on his knees, Xavier went through his memory for the proper sermon.

We all have desires, inclinations, and compulsions , Frank had once lectured. This is our animal side, our innocence. But once we make these urges into reality we find that we are cast out. Why? Because we are animals but we are also human beings. These feelings that rise up in us are like the growl of a lion. We want and we take. But if you stand back a moment, if you learn to control the animal appetite in you, then the kingdom will open up and you will find deliverance .

Frank never mentioned God or his relatives. He talked about concepts and consequences-every now and then offering a religious metaphor.

Xavier didn’t understand what Frank had done to him on that late Wednesday morning in the dark bar where he had, only minutes before, considered murdering a woman over something he might have confessed to.

My name is Frank , he’d said, and I think I can help you.…

“Mr. Noland?”

Xavier didn’t want to break away from the reverie. He enjoyed remembering, counting the moments that led to a completely unexpected deliverance.

“Yes?” Xavier said.

“My aunt will see you in the yard.”

Doris Milne led Xavier through a sunken living room that was furnished with gaudy golden-colored wood and blue fabric furniture. The floor was wooly brown shag surrounded by walls hung with more than a dozen oils depicting differing types of flowers. There were rose, cactus blooms, and bird-of-paradise-pansies, poppies, and a spray of purple orchids that seemed as if it might sway if a breeze came along.

There was the feeling of corruption coming from every innocent detail of this large parlor. The Parishioner didn’t know whether this was because of the story he was given by Benol or a sixth sense he’d developed in a long career of bad men and women plying their trades without concern or remorse.

On the other side of the semisubmerged living room was a step up to a long sliding glass window. The transparent door was open, leading out to a brick-laid patio surrounded by tall cedars and set upon by dappled sunlight and shade bisected by bark and leaf.

In a metal chair that had been painted pink sat a small, elderly woman in a jade-and-wheat-colored dress. Her feet didn’t go all the way to the bricks. On the pink metal table next to her was a tall, slender glass filled with a bright green liquid that Xavier was sure had a high alcoholic content.