Dominion (3 page)

“Very funny.” Dani tried not to laugh, but she did. “Come on, Antsy. There’s more to life here than gangs and drugs, and you know it. I want you to promise me you’ll think about it.” She looked at him with those big pleading brown eyes.

“Okay,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender, almost touching the ceiling. “I promise.”

“Great. I love you, big brother.” She kissed him on the cheek and gave him a bear hug. He’d always enjoyed her hugs, even when they were children.

Clarence got in the Bonneville and drove down Jackson, the street now gleaming with a late summer sprinkle that cooled the night air to a pleasant chill. About every third streetlight didn’t work. Some had burned out, others were shot out, target practice for gangbangers. The street gleamed, black oil drawn out by the light rain.

As he drove by houses, Clarence imagined residents going through the ritual of checking and rechecking the locks on their doors. Like tortoises withdrawing into their shells, many inner-city families withdrew into their houses shortly after dark to find refuge. He watched teenagers still on the streets, some on foot, some on dime-speed bikes, some driving, including a few he was certain weren’t old enough. As he turned on to Martin Luther King, he saw graffiti tags everywhere, reminding him of wolves marking their territory.

He thought about Tyrone. He had to help Dani, to keep Ty from running with those young hoodlums. Yeah. He’d make sure of it.

Clarence drove past a police car with two uniformed officers in the front seat. His whole body stiffened, and he exchanged wary glances with them.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” He winced, hearing behind him the muffled noise of successive backfires that seemed to go on and on. Or was it gunshots?

The cops pulled a U-turn and headed toward the sound. Clarence considered turning around himself. But why? If he turned around every time he thought he heard a gunshot in this part of town, he’d never get home. He drove a mile farther, heard a siren and watched another police car and then an ambulance fly by.

I don’t care what you say, little sis. I’m going to get you out of here before it’s too late.

Clarence turned to his favorite Christian radio station. He listened to the preacher say, “God wants his children healthy and happy. Claim his promises for you, and he’ll send his angels to protect you. He’ll make you prosper, and he won’t let harm come your way.”

Thirty minutes later Clarence turned into his driveway east of Gresham. Suddenly he hit the brakes, startled. A bluish figure paced frantically under the front porch light.

Geneva? It was after midnight.

He saw his wife’s contorted face and shoved the Bonneville into park before it stopped. He jumped out of the lurching car and bounded up the porch steps.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened? Are the kids all right?”

“Oh, baby.” Geneva sobbed. She hugged him tight, clung to him. She was trying to tell him something, but Clarence couldn’t understand her.

“Calm down, Geneva! Tell me what’s going on.”

“I got a call. From Hattie Burns. It’s Dani.”

“What? What happened?”

“She’s been shot. Dani’s been shot!”

“I’ll stay with the kids. Call me!”

Clarence didn’t hear Geneva’s frantic voice. He’d already hopped in the car and jammed it into reverse as soon as she’d said, “Emanuel Hospital.”

“Be careful,” she begged as the hedge obscured her view of the screeching Bonneville. She prayed he’d make it to the hospital in his car rather than an ambulance.

Clarence drove toward Emanuel in a blur, immersed in a fog of thoughts and images and questions and pleadings to God. The farther he got into the city, the more the artificial lights bombarded him, on the one hand illuminating what was out there, on the other obscuring it.

The streetlights bounced off his car’s metallic finish, creating a reddish glint. The SSE was sporty, expensive. More than they could afford. He thought of how meaningless the car was in the face of what was happening.

What is happening?

What was it the health and prosperity book said this morning? “Serve God and he’ll always take care of you. Count on it!”

O God, take care of her. Please make her all right. Please.

He ran three red lights getting to the freeway. Holding it to seventy, he hoped to escape being pulled over by the police. When he finally got off at the hospital exit, he came to a stop and waited impatiently for red to turn green.

Why wouldn’t she listen to him? Sure, the suburbs weren’t heaven. True, half the time you didn’t know your neighbor. He might be an embezzler or tax evader or adulterer. Maybe his kid smokes dope and cheats in algebra and his wife’s in alcohol rehab. But at least they just gossip about you or at worst bash in your mailbox. They don’t shoot you.

He drove up to the big red Emergency sign, ignoring parking instructions. He ran up to the double glass doors and into the waiting room.

The blonde receptionist, skittish at the sight of the intruder, held her finger over a panic button and said in her most commanding voice, “Yes? Can I help you?”

“My sister.” Clarence struggled for breath. “She’s here.”

“Name?”

“Clarence Abernathy.”

“I mean your
sister’s
name.” Clarence thought he heard condescension in her voice.

“Dani. Dani Rawls.”

She looked over some papers, then pushed a few buttons on the computer, looking at the screen. “When was she admitted?”

“I don’t know. Forty minutes ago, maybe. Where is she? What’s happening?”

“We have no record of her. We do have a Rawls though. Felicia Rawls.”

“Felicia? That’s my niece!”

O God, not Felicia.

“Yes. She’s…hold on, I’d better get a doctor. Please take a seat.”

“I’m going in.”

“No! You can’t!” She pressed the panic button. As Clarence pushed open the emergency door a blue-coated doctor said, “Hold on. You can’t come in here!”

“Where’s Felicia? Where’s Dani?”

A uniformed security guard rushed in from the parking lot. When Clarence turned toward him, the guard put his hand on his gun.

“Wait,” the doctor said. He looked at Clarence. “Are you related to Felicia Rawls?”

“She’s my niece.”

“Okay. All right. I think we’ve got it under control, Freddy,” he said to the guard. “I’m Dr. Brose,” he said to Clarence. “Please sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” His eyes smoldered. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“Your niece is in surgery.”

“Surgery? Why?”

“To remove the bullets.”

“Bullets? Felicia’s been shot too?”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Brose said. “I thought you knew. Look, Dr. Mahmoud is doing the surgery. I’m not sure how long it will be.” He craned his neck, looking through the door’s glass window. “There’s a surgery nurse coming out. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

Clarence put his foot in the door, heard hushed whispers in the hallway, then watched Dr. Brose coming with another doctor. This one had blood on his blue scrubs, his brown forehead dripping with sweat.

“This is Dr. Mahmoud,” Dr. Brose said to Clarence.

Great. They couldn’t get an American doctor to treat a little black girl?

“Are you Felicia’s closest relative?” Dr. Mahmoud asked Clarence.

“Besides her mother and…Yeah, I’m the closest.”

“Your niece took two bullets.”

Clarence’s jaw trembled.

“One’s not a problem. It’s in her shoulder. We can get it later if…”

“If what?”

“If we can…take care of the one lodged in her cranium.”

“Her head?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Clarence sat down.

“I got the surgery started. We couldn’t wait for the specialist. Dr. Deumajing took over for me, and I’ve been assisting.”

Deumajing? What is this, a United Nations hospital?

“Was the surgery successful?”

“It’s still going on.”

“Then why are you out here?”

“I’ve been working ten hours straight, been in four surgeries. They pushed me out the door for a break. You don’t want to get punchy. We’ve still got a ways to go. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to come out. It will be another hour at least.”

“Do either of you know where my sister is? Dani Rawls?”

“No,” Dr. Brose said, while Dr. Mahmoud shrugged. “Is she supposed to be here?”

“That’s what I was told. She was shot too. Unless they got mixed up and meant just Felicia. But then Dani would be here. Where is she?”

“I don’t know anything about her,” Dr. Mahmoud said. “I’ve been with Felicia. I need to get a cup of coffee then head back into surgery. You’ll have to ask the receptionist.”

“I did. She doesn’t know anything.” Dr. Mahmoud walked back through the door.

“Where did the shooting happen?” Dr. Brose asked.

“North Portland. Jackson Street.”

“Maybe there were two ambulances. They could have taken your sister to Bess Kaiser.”

“I’ll call them,” the receptionist said, dialing the number without having to look it up.

“Thanks,” Clarence mumbled. He looked at her, wondering why she was on hold so long.

“Sorry,” she finally said. “They have no Dani Rawls.”

Clarence went to the phone and called Dani’s number. No answer.

I can’t do Felicia any good here. I’ve got to find Dani.

He ran to his car. He drove toward Martin Luther King Boulevard, praying for Felicia and Dani.

She’s just a little girl, God. Just a child. And she needs her mama. So do I.

Clarence rolled down his window, needing to feel the fresh air and light rain on his face. He whizzed by the graffiti-marred street signs of Brumbelow and Moffat and made a sharp right turn onto Jackson Street, his tires squealing.

What the…

He threw on the brakes and skidded to a stop two feet short of a car parked crossways in the middle of the street.

Who’s the jerk that left his car…

A thin muscular man with what looked like tools dangling from his belt stood stiffly. He’d popped up from behind the parked car and moved cautiously but swiftly toward Clarence’s window.

Clarence jumped out, moving toward the man, his voice agitated. “I need to get to my sister’s.”

“Hold it right there.” The man’s arms were fully extended in front of him. Clarence looked at the gun in his hand.

“Show me both hands. Now! Get ’em up!”

Clarence raised both his hands. He knew the drill.

“Keep ’em up.”

Clarence surveyed the scene, shrouded in semidarkness because of three shot-out streetlights. He now saw a half-dozen people, some of them in robes and nightshirts, gawking at Dani’s house. He looked at the yellow police tape strung across the street behind the police car. He could barely read the bold black letters on the shimmering yellow tape: Crime Scene—Do Not Cross.

“Bend over. Hands on the hood.”

Clarence leaned on his hands, turned his head to the left, and looked toward Dani’s, three houses away. He could see a bustle of activity, at least four people standing on Dani’s front porch, coming in and out the front door.

The uniformed officer patted him down. Though Clarence had never committed a crime other than speeding, this was the sixth time in some twenty-two years living in Portland he’d been patted down by police. He was counting.

The cop turned his neck to the left and mumbled something into a two-way radio microphone on his shoulder, with the curly black chord running down to his belt.

“Can we get this over with, officer? That’s my sister’s house. My name’s Clarence Abernathy.”

“Abernathy? The sportswriter?”

“Yeah.”

And who are you, Elliot Ness?

“All right, take out your wallet,” the officer said. “I need to see some ID.” The cop seemed more relaxed now that the pat down had produced nothing more threatening than breath mints and a credit card receipt.

Clarence remembered his
Trib
press pass. He turned to lean back through the window and reach into the glove box.

“Freeze!” The officer’s gun followed him like a homing beacon. “Keep your hands out of the car!”

“But my press pass is in—”

“Just show me your driver’s license.”

Clarence fumbled through the wallet and produced his license. The officer shined a flashlight on the picture, and then on Clarence’s face. He made another mental comparison, perhaps to his profile sketch in the
Trib.

“Okay, Mr. Abernathy. I’m sorry. But you should drive more carefully. And don’t go jumping out of your car like that. With what happened here tonight I thought… It’s a tense situation.”

“What
did
happen here?” Tired of not getting answers, Clarence strode toward the yellow tape and stepped right over it.

“Wait. Stop! You can’t go in there.”

“I just did,” he mumbled, not looking back.

Clarence marched toward the house, still sixty feet away, eyeing a second ribbon of yellow tape cordoning off the entire front of the house. If he had just walked into the holy place, he now headed toward the holy of holies. He expected the officer he’d passed to grab him, but instead he heard him talking on his radio in an excited voice.

Out Dani’s front door barged a heavy-jowled, ham-fisted man in plainclothes, maybe six feet tall but an easy 250 pounds. He duck-walked to the top stair, then glided quickly down the steps. He stepped over the yellow tape beneath him and faced off with Clarence.

“Hold it right there, buddy.”

I’m not your buddy.

“This is a crime scene. You can’t come in. You’ve got to leave.”

Clarence stood still, restraining himself and calculating his next move.

“I’m Detective Ollie Chandler.”

Well, I’m the Prince of Wales. Wait a minute. Ollie Chandler?

The uniformed officer appeared from behind, looking back nervously at the assigned post he’d deserted in pursuit of Clarence.

“I warned Mr. Abernathy not to come in,” the officer said.

“Look,” Detective Chandler said to Clarence, “the yellow tape there—you might have read it as you crossed it—it’s the one that says a kazillion times Do Not Cross? It’s to keep the rubbernecks away from a crime scene that needs to remain undisturbed. So please, Mr. Abernathy…hang on.
Clarence
Abernathy? From the
Tribune?”

“Yeah.” Clarence felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Recognition had gotten him in a lot of places. Maybe now he’d get an apology.

“Well, then,” Detective Chandler said, “you’re especially unwelcome.”