Mission Flats

27

The Calvary Pentecostal Church of God in Christ had begun its life as the Temple Beth Adonai. That name was still visible, impressed in the architrave above the main entrance. Other vestiges remained. Six-point stars woven into the wrought-iron fence. Stained-glass windows, now protected by steel grates, depicting Old Testament stories: Adam and Eve leaving the garden; the sacrifice of Isaac; Moses receiving the tablets on Mount Sinai. The overlay of Christian symbols was relatively impermanent. You had the sense that, if the lost Jews of Mission Flats ever decided to return from the suburbs, their temple could be restored in just a few hours.

I came here directly from my meeting with Caroline. The last few days, I had made this church part of my rounds, part of the hunt for Harold Braxton. But now I came here for a different reason. I had nowhere else to go, no place to think. It was hard not to think of the church as a sanctuary in the archaic legal sense, a sacred place where fugitives like me were immune from arrest.

I entered the building through a mammoth wooden door. Inside was a lobby and then the worship space, which soared to an onion-shaped dome — a bit of eastern European exotica that again recalled the building’s original tenants. Water-stained and veined with cracks, the dome had the power to stop you cold.

My hand touched each of the benches as I moved down the aisle. I went through the habitual motions of looking for Braxton. I tried doors — offices, storage rooms, vestry, anyplace that could serve as a hideout. As usual, the building appeared deserted. All the rooms had a stale, dusty smell, suggesting they had not been used, or even aired out, in quite a while.

I sat down in a pew. There was an urge to let go and cry, and an equally powerful urge to fight back, to prove my innocence. I slumped and let my head loll back against the bench. On Sunday mornings, no doubt, bored little kids studied the cracks in the dome, traced them as they threaded upward, only to end abruptly or merge into other, deeper cracks.

I became aware that I was no longer alone.

At the back of the church, a kid stared at me. He was thickset and tall, very dark-skinned, with a showy red bandanna tied around his head like a skullcap. Not Braxton. This was a kid I’d never seen before. He stood with arms crossed, watching me.

His eyes flickered up to the dome.

‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

No response.

I came out of the pew and down the red-carpeted aisle. The kid was already gone. I raced out to the church steps. He had disappeared.

Back inside, I stood in the spot vacated by this visitor and retraced his glance up into the dome. There was, I saw, a ring around the base of it, a feature I’d never noticed before. It dawned on me that there must be a way up there. There must be a way to reach the dome to clean or paint it or to replace a bulb. It was the only place I hadn’t looked.

In an office off the hallway, I found a secretary stuffing envelopes. She asked, ‘May I help you?’

I identified myself as a cop, even flipped open my badge holder to make it official. ‘Is there a way up to that dome?’

‘Why would you want to go up there?’ she asked, bewildered.

I told her, honestly enough, ‘I’m not sure.’ She led me to a staircase behind a locked door.

In better circumstances, I would have called in my position, just in case. That was obviously impossible now. Yet confronting Braxton alone, if indeed he was up there, was foolish. Where was John Kelly? Where was he constantly disappearing to? I wrote down Gittens’s name and told the secretary, ‘If I’m not back in ten minutes, call this number and tell him Ben Truman is here, alright?’ It was up to Gittens. He could leave me here or come, as he saw fit. At this point, it was all the precaution I could muster.

Up and up. Up a staircase that switchbacked six times. At the top, a narrow door, so narrow you had to turn your shoulders to avoid the door frame.

Out onto a catwalk that circled the base of the dome.

Very high, with a handrail set at thigh level — too low to be seen from the seats below — and too low to put your hand on when you looked over the edge. The church floor was far below — two, three stories at least. A red carpet ran up the center aisle and spread out over the altar.

Nearby on the catwalk, a pile of bedding — no, just clothes bundled on the floor.

And on the opposite side of the dome was Harold Braxton, wide-eyed, gaping at me.

I pulled my gun. Two times in one week. Cops on TV always draw their guns. I racked the slide. The gun felt heavy, foreign. I’m on TV. My own TV show.

I looked down at the gun in my hand. Then across at Braxton.

There was a hollow flump.

The sound echoed. It was inside my head and outside my head. Flump. A sound but no pain. No sensation at all.

I was down on the catwalk. Dusty brown linoleum. My cheek was pressed against it. I had not fallen. The film had skipped a frame somehow — I was standing, then I was on the floor.

I looked up at June Veris — enormous in a red T-shirt — a great leonine head, pale, sleepy-eyed. He was holding some sort of truncheon that reminded me of Kelly’s nightstick. ‘Don’t you look at me, motherfucka. Don’t you fuckin’ look at me!’

I kept looking at him.

‘What’d I just tell you? Look the fuck down!’

I looked down. Rolling my head started a dull, pressurized pain. The brain sloshing in its shell like an egg yolk, quivering, threatening to split the delicate membrane. I touched the back of my head. My hair was damp.

Veris said, ‘What do we do now, cousin?’

I looked up.

Another sound — not pain, but sound — whoom — reverberating in and around my skull.

There was a strange calm. Dreamy. I analyzed the sound. It was recognizably the truncheon striking my skull. I wanted to remember that sound.

This time the blow drove my head forward. Drove my chin into my chest.

My body coiled, reflexed — my face burned along the floor until it loomed out over the edge of the catwalk and the red church floor stretched three stories below. I jerked my head back.

Veris again: ‘I tol’ you, look the fuck down!’

I looked down at the floor. The egg yolk trembled. Not pain but something more remote — the objective awareness of injury — a rumor of pain.

Veris’s hand rifled through my pockets, extracted my wallet and badge holder. ‘What you want to do now, cousin?’

A voice said: ‘Leave him. It’s okay, you go.’

I turned my head to see Veris trundle off, squeeze through the door and disappear. His footsteps echoed on the staircase.

Harold Braxton was holding my gun. ‘Serious piece,’ he mused. It was a nine-millimeter Beretta. He dropped the magazine out of the handle, then racked the gun to clear the chamber. The cartridge fell over the edge and landed on the carpet far below us with a soft sound.

There was a brief gap — like sleep — then I awoke to Braxton asking, ‘Why’d you come here?’

‘The DA wants you picked up.’

‘You all there is?’

I nodded. The egg yolk rolled, shivered, but held together, although now the pain was very real. I decided to keep my head perfectly still. ‘Yeah, just me.’

‘You really from Maine?’

‘Yeah.’

Braxton closed my badge holder and tossed it on the floor beside me.

‘I didn’t cap that DA.’

‘Oh.’

‘Listen to me! I didn’t shoot him.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter?’

‘The DA just wants to question you. You can tell her-’

He snorted. ‘Tell her what? That I’m innocent? Gee, you think she’ll believe me? They think I killed cops. I never killed no cops.’

‘Actually they think I killed one too.’ I pushed myself up on all fours.

‘Stay down,’ he ordered. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘They think I killed that DA.’

‘You’re a cop, right? And they think you killed a DA?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Man, that is fucked up. That is…’ His voice trailed off. He could not think of another way to describe it. ‘That’s fucked up.’

I struggled to my feet. Above me — very close now — was the navel of the dome, that shadowy little dimple. To my left, only space — air — and below, the carpet spilling red down from the altar and into the aisle.

Braxton stepped away from me. He tossed my empty gun on the floor and pulled one of his own, a little snub-nose thing.

I said, ‘You can help me.’

‘Help you?’

‘They’re going to put it on me, the Danziger thing. I can feel it.’

‘It’s Gittens, idn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Gittens. Up to his old tricks.’

‘What do you-’

There was a sound at the front of the church.

Standing now, dizzy, I twisted to look over the edge of the catwalk — down — who was here? — the fluid in my skull shifted — it pulled me — I reached for the railing but it was too low and I missed it — momentum began to carry me over — the egg yolk, bleeding — and I fell.

My arm hooked the steel railing, jolting my elbow. But the bar slipped down my sleeve and past my fingers. I had time to realize, I’m falling.

Braxton punched my back as he grabbed my sweatshirt — then slapped his other hand down on my arm.

We looked at each other. He was breathing heavily, frightened now, and straining against the weight of my body. ‘Pull!’ he snarled.

I flailed for the railing or the ledge of the catwalk, but I was clumsy, scared, disoriented.

Braxton leaned precariously over the rail, his breath rasping. Before long my weight would carry us both over.

‘Don’t let go!’ I pleaded.

There was a clatter below. Gittens burst in. He looked up at Braxton and me, swore under his breath, and sprinted for the stairs.

‘Gittens,’ I said.

‘Fuck!’

Braxton tugged me up high enough that I could grab the railing again, and together we were able to pull my body back over. I fell onto the catwalk like a sailor toppling into a lifeboat.

Gittens’s steps on the staircase grew louder.

Braxton hustled over toward his pile of clothes, shuffling, moving as quickly as he dared go on the narrow catwalk.

I staggered up again. The weight of that swirling yolk made me unsteady, threatened to carry me over again. I lurched toward Braxton, around the narrow ring.

Braxton, who had been gathering his clothes, straightened up to watch me. He had an incredulous expression. He shook his head and returned to his clothes, tying off knots in the pile. Teetering toward him, I must have looked like Frankenstein. Why would he give me any thought?

When I reached him, though, I clapped my hand around his upper arm and squeezed. He tried to pull his arm away, but I had decided that nothing — nothing — would force me to open my fingers. Braxton was a strong kid, but it turned out I was pretty strong too. Those were Claude Truman’s hands he was pulling against.

‘There’s nowhere to run, Harold. There’s no way out. Don’t fight them.’

‘I didn’t do it,’ he implored. ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘Harold, what are you going to do? Fly away?’

Gittens appeared at the door. He was panting. He stepped onto the catwalk, holding one hand on the doorpost to steady himself.

‘Let me go,’ Braxton growled. ‘I didn’t do this.’

Gittens held a pistol, a blue-black Beretta like mine. ‘Ben. Get down.’

Braxton’s eyes were on the gun, then on me.

‘Ben, if Braxton did it, then you didn’t. Get down.’

Gittens racked the Beretta, and at that instant — when I heard the metallic movement of the slide I saw Gittens Why should I get down? and I understood. I knew what was about to happen.

‘Ben,’ Gittens repeated. ‘Get down.’

Gittens meant to kill him. It wasn’t in his face or in his voice. But I knew. There was not going to be an arrest. It was an execution, pure and simple. And he was offering a bargain: Braxton instead of me.

I decided that was not going to happen.

‘Ben!’

Even if it was all true and Braxton was a murderer and a cop killer — even if he owed an eye for an eye, a life for a life — and even if it would get me off on this absurd charge of killing Bob Danziger, a man I’d met all of one time — I couldn’t allow it, much less take part. I’d gone far enough.

I released Braxton’s arm. ‘Go,’ I said.

He looked at me, not sure whether to trust me. Then he grabbed the clothes and tossed them over the ledge. The bundle unfurled into a crude rope, shirts and towels and whatnot, each item tied to the end of the next one. He’d secured the rope to the railing. It was too short, though. The end dangled ten feet from the church floor.

‘Ben, get out of the way!’ Gittens ordered.

I looked at him.

Braxton went over the railing.

Dizzy, I slumped to my knees.

Braxton clung to the rope for a moment, swinging, legs scissoring.

Gittens fired at him but missed.

The gunshot boomed through the empty church.

Braxton dropped onto the red rug below. He splayed on his knees but quickly scrambled to his feet and sprinted under the catwalk, where Gittens did not have a shot at him.

Gittens scurried around the platform to find him, but there was no chance. He had no line of fire until Braxton bolted through the door, and at that point he did not even take the shot. Instead Gittens put up his gun and, across the shadowy dome, glared at me.