Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

“Your sister leave a will?” I asked.

“A…I’m sure she…You think I killed Claire for Bill’s money?”

“It’s a possibility,” I said.

“Bill and Claire have children, grandchildren,” he said. “It’s none of your business but I loved my sister.”

“Who died before I could convince her to get her husband out of here so he could vote on the Midnight Pass issue, which will make you even richer than you are.”

“Time to leave, Fonesca,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Going to make quite a story on television and in the newspapers,” I said. “Ann Rule might even come back here and write a book about this.”

“Stanley,” he said, and Stanley stepped forward.

Stanley and Ames were a few feet apart now, an amused smile on Stanley’s lips, nothing showing on Ames’s face.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Hoffmann turned and walked back into the shadows. Stanley opened the door for us and the three of us marched quietly down the paved driveway while the gate swung open.

Ames and I stepped out.

“‘The meanest thrives the most, where dignity, true personal dignity, abideth not,’” Stanley said through the bars of the gate. He was smiling. “‘A light and cruel world, cut off from all the natural inlets of just sentiment, from lowly sympathy, and chastening truth, where good and evil never have that name.’ Wordsworth.”

He turned and started back toward the house.

“That’s a pair of crazy men,” Ames said.

“Or something like it,” I said, getting in the car.

Ames got in the passenger seat and buckled up.

“So, what do we do?”

“We find a way to get William Trasker out of there before the commission meeting tonight,” I said, shifting into drive and stepping on the gas.

“There is enough room in Heaven for every God-loving Christian and all the saints that have been or ever will be,” said Reverend Fernando Wilkens from the pulpit of the Fourth Baptist Church on Tenth Street just off of Orange. “God’s Heaven and bounty show no bounds.”

The walls were brick painted white, with stained-glass windows along both sides of the room depicting stations of the cross.

Directly in front of the pulpit, a simple wooden casket with bronze handles rested on what looked like two sawhorses covered in dark blue velvet.

Ames and I, hats in hand, stood in the back of the air-conditioned church, nearly filled with black men and women and a small sprinkling of whites. I guessed about one hundred fifty people sat listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the deep, confident voice of Reverend Wilkens, dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, his hands on the pulpit, his eyes seeking those below him. Those eyes had met mine when Ames and I entered, but the meeting had only been fleeting.

“Notice,” Wilkens said, holding up his right hand. “I said ‘God-loving’, not ‘God-fearing,’ for the good need never fear God. The problem is that we never think we are good enough. Beware the man or woman who thinks he or she is good enough to enter Heaven. That is self-righteous vanity. We strive to do good. We know the words and commandments of the Lord. We know which we have disobeyed and which we have violated. We know, in fact, my friends, what the right thing to do is. We know that when we transgress we can always ask for forgiveness. We know our Lord is willing to forgive those who truly repent. I said ‘truly’ for the Lord can look into your heart. Your idea of true repentance may be that you are sorry for what you did because it means you won’t be getting into Heaven. No, the only sorry that counts is when you wish you had not hurt another human being. We can but hope and follow the path of righteousness which is in our hearts and souls.”

A woman in the audience said, “Amen.”

“And there is always a price to pay for our sins,” Wilkens went on. “A stab of pain in our conscience for the small indiscretion, a jab of ice to our heart for the large ones.”

“And I know it to be true,” came the woman’s voice again.

“We are here,” Wilkens said, and looked around the gathering in the seats before him. “We are here to bid farewell to the soul of Joseph Lawrence Hopkins. His body we will bury, but his soul has or soon will be taken by the hand of an angel, and may that angel lead him to the land of eternal glory. And to that we say amen.”

The congregation, including Ames and me, said, “Amen.”

Wilkens eyes met mine now and held fast. A few heads turned to see what or who the reverend was looking at.

“Grief is the price we pay for loving and losing,” he said. “Grief is a holy gift which we hold tenderly and then let free. Grief must find its way into our very souls and let us go on living, performing God’s will, making us better human beings for its sake.”

His eyes left mine and turned down to the casket.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “Have you ever known me to lie to you?”

“No,” came the chorus of answers.

“I would be a liar and a hypocrite if I were to tell you Joseph Lawrence Hopkins was a good man. He was, at the age of sixteen, not even a man at all. His was and is a troubled soul, one that made his good mother Marie weep. But he was also a troubled soul who clearly cared for his two sisters and regretted the pain he caused his mother.”

Wilkens lifted both hands, palms up.

“The Lord will weigh the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the body and soul.”

The right hand moved down slowly and then the left and then both hands came up with the palms of the Reverend Fernando Wilkens facing the congregation.

“And the Lord will do what is best. Let us all rise and sing ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’ and as those chosen carefully carry the casket to the waiting hearse, follow them, continuing our song. We will meet at the graveside for internment. Let us rise.”

Everyone rose with a minimum of shuffling as six men, four young and two past the age of fifty, all but one black, came forward and lifted the casket.

Ames and I moved out of the way. The bearers bore their burden through the door, with people following them and singing.

We stood waiting for the crowd to clear the church. Wilkens remained at the pulpit.

“Life is filled with contradictions and enigmas,” Wilkens said, his voice now echoing in the empty hall. “That boy died of a heart attack during a basketball game. The temperature in that gym was almost one hundred degrees. There wasn’t enough money to fix the air-conditioning and he quite literally played his heart out to avoid the temptation of drugs. You have something to tell me about William Trasker?”

“I’m not sure this is the right place to tell it,” I said, looking around.

Wilkens followed my eyes to a stained-glass image of Christ on his knees with the cross on his shoulder.

“There is nothing that cannot be said here,” Wilkens said. “He would hear us even in a steel tomb. In spite of what you may think or the newspapers may suggest, I am not a hypocrite. I believe in my God and I will do what I feel I must to carry out His wishes.”

I told him about the incidents at Midnight Pass and the Laundromat. I told him about Obermeyer, Stanley, and Hoffmann. I told him Hoffmann was Roberta Trasker’s brother. I told him that I was going to try to get William Trasker to that commission meeting tonight if he were alive, willing, and able.

Wilkens nodded and got out from behind the pulpit. He stood before us now and looked at Ames, me, and at a stained-glass Christ on a stained-glass cross.

“I’ve got a small, well-educated, and sometimes angry group of parishioners who want to change these windows,” he said. “They don’t want a white savior. They claim that Christ was not white but a Jew, a dark Semite, a very dark Semite, certainly not the golden-tressed young man with the well-trimmed beard and sad eyes whose image surrounds us.”