Mary couldn’t remember if Rita had answered her question. “Would Lonnie have any way to get out to Townsend, that you know of? It’s a long drive from the city and I know there is no public transportation.”
“We do have a car, I have a nice Altima, and usually Lonnie used to drive me to work because I work the early shift and he picks me up, so he does have access to the car, but I don’t know if he was driving out to Townsend.”
“So as far as you know, Lonnie didn’t have any relationship with Fiona?”
“No, he didn’t. He didn’t have any relationship with her.”
Mary couldn’t let it go. If Lonnie had a way to get out to Townsend, which he did, it was possible that he was meeting Fiona, and his mother wouldn’t know. “Fiona’s sister Allegra, the one I told you about, thinks he used to come over when Fiona was babysitting for her.”
“That the little girl? That’s crazy, that girl has emotional problems, has mental problems. I hate to say it, and God forgive me because I know it’s not Christian, but I’m afraid something’s wrong with her head. You have to know that, don’t you?” Rita lifted an eyebrow. “She’s been writing letters to Lonnie since she was a little girl. She’s got my son on the brain, and I’ve seen those letters, you have to wonder what that little girl could be thinking about, sending him so many letters.”
Mary decided it was time to get to the point. “Well, as I said at the outset, I have to attack the guilty plea. I need to understand why he pled guilty, if I want to convince the district attorney to reopen his case.”
“It’s not his fault, it’s his lawyer told him to do it, and he didn’t plead guilty when they first asked him, you know.”
“I do know that, but can you take me through it? Don’t leave anything out, because we don’t know which details will be legally significant.”
“Okay.” Rita nodded. “I remember it very well, even though it was so long ago, I go over and over it in my head, asking myself what did we do wrong. Lonnie is my only child and we’re very close, always have been. It was just him and me almost as soon as he was born, until I met Gerold, but I guess he told you that.”
Mary nodded, but Rita didn’t need any encouragement to continue. Oddly, Rita reminded her of Allegra, the two of them bereft without the people they loved, torn apart by the same crime, on different sides of the same coin.
“We’ve been through some very hard times together, life’s ups and downs, you know that it wasn’t easy, after his father left, Lonnie was only six months old, but we survived, with the help of the Lord, you know. Lonnie was a good baby, a good boy with a good heart, I s’pose every mother says this, but it was true from the beginning, except when he got colic he cried, but otherwise no, he has a sweet nature, that boy.”
Mary listened to her talk, feeling her pain and seeing her loneliness.
“Lonnie really is a good boy, I know you hear that, you see that on the news, but it is the heartbreak of my life that he got accused of that murder, and you know he didn’t kill that girl, he would never do anything like that.” Rita swallowed hard, and her dark eyes shone with a wetness that she blinked quickly away. “I lay my head on my pillow every night, and he’s the last thing I think about right before I sleep, and you know half the nights I can’t sleep. Half the nights I’m up, wondering if he’s scared, thinking about him behind those big walls, trapped inside with all those killers and gangbangers and such.”
“I know.”
“He was a fine student in school all the way through, always rather be reading than even playing basketball, though he was good at that too, and you know his coaches, they tried to get him to play. Tried to recruit him, even though they knew that system would just chew him up, use him up like they do. Lonnie’s a good ballplayer, but not good enough for the big leagues, not tall enough neither.”
Mary didn’t want to interrupt her, but she could see that it was going to be tough to bring the conversation back to the guilty plea.
“I believe the only way to get ahead is to get an education, this isn’t a family with the TV always on or the video games and whatnot, John Madden or Kobe or whatever foolishness, like you see nowadays. You can’t develop an imagination if that’s all you do with your free time, you can’t develop your mind. Lonnie was straight A’s almost, and he was at Temple University, you know.”
“I do.”
“He got wonderful grades there, even made the Dean’s List and he was competing with kids from a lot better high schools, kids didn’t have to go through half of what he went through, and the Lord guided his feet through some of the darkest, times, the darkest times we ever saw.”
“I’m sure.”
“Right before the end of his freshman year, I find out I have a spot on my liver, cancer. I’ve been healthy all my life, take good care of myself and him, and boy, that news threw me for a loop. I couldn’t have the laparoscopic, I had to have what they call open, right there in University Hospital, where I worked. All the people I knew, the staff, they came by and saw me, and the Church, and the Nurses Ministry, and the Women’s Ministry, they visited me at the hospital and at home, they baked up a storm, and the doctors, they saved my life. Today I’m a survivor, I survived, I had to, for my boy. I always tell him, we’re all we have.”
“I bet.”
“I came through with the help of the good Lord, and everybody in our church, they prayed for me, yes they did. The Lord, he does have his own plan, and I didn’t see it at the time, but I came to see His way, that my illness, it came about because the Lord wanted our congregation to come together.”
Mary believed in God, but still could never square that something like cancer was God’s will. Still, she could see where Lonnie got his belief that it was God’s plan for him to accept a prison term that robbed him of the prime of his life. Maybe God worked in mysterious ways, but sometimes Mary could do with a little less mystery. She briefly considered setting Nancy Drew on God himself.
“The church, they tithed for me, everybody committed, and the Tithing Ministry carried me on their shoulders, just as soon as they got wind of the diagnosis. You know how much money it costs, the room itself was $1,800 a day and that wasn’t even a private. I lost my good health insurance when my husband died. It cost almost $50,000, but the Tithing Ministry and the Church raised it all, yes they did. James, he talked about it every Sunday for a year, and First Lady Donna, his wife, she kep’ it going, every Sunday, people made their offerings, they tithed.” Rita shook her graying head. “That was a dark time, a very dark time, like rolling the dice with your life and Lonnie in jail, waitin’ on his trial, but God had a plan, and United Bible lifted me up, and here I am.”
Mary seized her chance. “Now to get back to the guilty plea.”
“Yes, well, I remember the day Bob Brandt came here about it, Bob really did want Lonnie to take the deal. He went to the jailhouse to tell him about it, but Lonnie said no. I wasn’t there, but Bob came over that very night, sat right where you are, and told me all about the deal. He said it was a very good deal and it would save Lonnie from a lifetime in prison, but Lonnie didn’t want to take it.”
“Why?”
“Because like you say, he didn’t do the murder. He wasn’t guilty. He didn’t want to say he was guilty when he wasn’t, and that was how I raised him. It was a lie, and it was a disgrace. Like I told you, I’m old-school, and everybody in our church thinks the same way I do. We think these gangbangers are a disgrace. Why, I marched in the street when they started that ‘don’t snitch’ nonsense. I believe you should snitch, you must snitch, if you see something, say something, that’s what I think.”
“And about the plea,” Mary prompted her.
“Anyway, Bob kept saying he should take the deal, pressuring him really, I know he thought he was doing the right thing, and maybe he was. Lonnie really wanted to get on the stand and tell what happened, and Bob said no, but then Bob gave in and they called Lonnie in that big courtroom, and you could see that he got
flustered as soon as he sat down, and the district attorney, he was slick, and Lonnie’s smart, but he didn’t have all the cards, you know the district attorney has all the cards. He knows what questions he’s going to ask.”
“So it didn’t go well.”
“No, it went terrible, just terrible. I tell you, I watched that, my own son up there in that new suit we bought him, and everybody from Church in the courtroom, we were watching, none of us could believe it. I know he didn’t do the murder, I know he didn’t, but to see him up there, even I woulda said he was guilty. He got so nervous, and everybody could tell, his mouth went dry and his lips caught on his teeth, just like they did on his first solos, you know in Sanctuary Choir and One Voice, he got jittery in the beginning, but he got used to it. But when he was on that witness stand, he shifted around, and his eyes started looking to the right and to the left, like a baby doll or something, it was a nightmare, I tell you.”
Mary remembered reading Lonnie’s testimony, and the black-and-white lines in the transcript would tell only half the story. If Lonnie got flustered, it meant he acted guilty, which would condemn him.
“That day, we met after his testimony, in a room in the Justice Center, Bob said they should call it the Injustice Center.” Rita wiped a new tear from her eye with a balled-up Kleenex. “Bob said, I’m going to see if we can still get us that deal, if they’ll go for it, and I was afraid they wouldn’t, but they did and he got it. They did it only because they wanted the bird in the hand, no appeals, a done deal, he told us, and he was right.”
“Then what happened?”
“We prayed and prayed on it, me and Lonnie, asking the Lord for guidance, hoping He’d show us the way, and Linda helped, too. Lonnie talked to Linda after me.”
Mary hadn’t heard that before. “Were you there when Lonnie talked to Linda?”
“No, she wanted a moment alone, and I understand that, she always cared for him, so much, and I knew they were saying good-bye.”
“But you don’t know what they said, do you? You couldn’t hear?”
“No, I stepped outside, and they were together a time, then she came and got us both and we went back in, and Lonnie said he would take the deal. Lonnie was crying, and I was crying. It broke my heart, and it broke Lonnie’s, too, but he said yes, and he took the deal.”
Mary wondered if somehow something that Linda had said had influenced Lonnie, and if that could help undermine the plea. “Where’s Linda Wall these days? Do you have her phone number or know where she lives?”
“Yes, of course. Excuse me one moment, I need to see the time.” Rita checked her watch. “Oh, my, I’ve been talking so much, I almost made myself late. I have to go up and change, then I have to get over to the church, we’re having our Family Fun Day tomorrow, our first picnic of the summer. I’m the worst cook in the Culinary Ministry, so Sister Faye said to me, ‘Sister Rita, you bring the trays and platters, but we’ll take care of the food.’” Rita smiled. “Anyway, I’m sorry, I was saying, I can give you Linda’s contact information, though if you want to speak with her tonight, you can come along with me, right after I change out of these hospital clothes. She’ll be at church tonight, helping out.”
“That would be great,” Mary said, brightening. She slid her pen and pad back into her purse.
“Then come along, and I’ll introduce you. She’s very active and very responsible, and she’s a very nice girl, I always liked her, she comes from a very good family, and her mother is a Deaconess. She was very serious about Lonnie. Do you think that you’ll be able to get Lonnie free and back home, where he belongs?”
Mary didn’t want to give her any false hope. “So far, not yet, but I’m going to keep trying.”
Chapter Forty-four
The stormy sky had gone prematurely dark, and Mary eyed the church through the rain-dotted window of Rita’s older brown Altima. United Bible Church, Founded 1947, Reverend James White, Pastor, read a plastic banner on its brick façade, and a tiny peaked roof covered its entrance, bright white double doors, each with a cross made of windows. Its red trim looked freshly painted and its brick newly repointed, but Mary was surprised by the church’s relatively small size. United Bible occupied a double-wide converted rowhouse, wedged between a vacant storefront on one side and rowhouse on the other.
“Rita, how big is the congregation at United Bible?”
“We think it’s the perfect size, and there’s plenty of room in God’s house to fit all of us.” Rita kept her eyes on the street, driving slowly, and the windshield wipers flapped madly to keep up with the storm. “We’ll be there in force tonight, and Sister Julie says that with the Lord’s blessing, one hand can do the work of one hundred hands.”
“How many parishioners do you have, though? Can you ballpark it?” Mary was thinking of her own parish church, whose numbers were diminishing every day, which was why she’d been so surprised that it was hard to book for the wedding. “My parents’ church has about only 150 active members now. Catholicism has fallen on hard times, that’s why so many parochial schools are closing.”
“Oh, that’s about our size, too, you see, younger people aren’t coming to worship the way they used to, except on our choirs, or our Music Ministry and our Praise Team Ministry.” Rita accelerated slowly in light traffic, scanning the parked cars along the curb.
“Looking for a parking space?”
“I know that’s right, and we should start praying, see, we’re late, because I took too long to get dressed and ready.” Rita winked at her, and Mary laughed.
“Ha! I don’t mean to doubt your faith, but I’ve prayed for a parking space before, and it never works.”
“Prayer does work, this I know.” Rita smiled in a lighthearted way, nodding as she kept looking. “Your calling me today, that was the power of prayer at work, yes it was.”
“Then parking must be the exception, because my car’s in the impound lot.” Mary didn’t believe God’s ultimate plan was to enrich the Philadelphia Parking Authority. “I drive around every night, looking for a space in Center City with my fiancé.”
“You’re getting married?” Rita practically squealed, and Mary could see her mood brighten as they got closer to the church. “Then that’s the answer, that’s why! If you can’t get a parking space, it must be that God wants you to stay in the car and spend some quality time with your young man.”
“Ha! You might be right.”
“See that lot?” Rita waved at a rubble-strewn vacant lot, through which the back door of the church was visible. “I don’t want you to get the idea that we sit on our hands at United Bible, for God helps those who help themselves, yes he surely does. We tithe to the Building Fund, and we’re hoping to buy the lot some day, then clean it up and pave it to make a parking lot for church officials, the elderly, and the handicapped.”
“Great idea.” Mary spotted a space in the middle of the row. “Look, a space. What does that tell you?”
“Our Lord and Savior wants his Pyrex dishes?” Rita burst into unexpectedly girlish laughter, parallel-parking like an expert. She cut the ignition, engaged the brake, and dropped her keys in her purse. “We’re going to get very wet. You sure you don’t mind helping me with the bags?”
“No, not at all,” Mary answered, and the women got busy, unloading the car and carrying shopping bags full of platters and casseroles wrapped in newspaper, so they wouldn’t break. They walked through the vacant lot to get to the church office, then down to its basement, struggling in the rain to bring bags back and forth. Mary had spent her childhood doing the same thing for her own church, so she felt at home, even though she was the only white face. Everyone made her feel so welcome, and Rita introduced her all around as a lawyer who was helping Lonnie get out of prison. Mary could hardly wait to meet Linda Wall and ask her about the guilty plea.
“Well, okay Miss Mary, thanks so much for your hard work.” Rita brushed rainwater from her teal jersey pantsuit, which she had on with low black heels, n
ow soaked.
“You’re very welcome.” Mary looked around the basement of a church that was a smaller version of the one in her parish church, with a windowless rectangular meeting room, the width of a city block. Inexpensive panels of fluorescent lights illuminated inspirational posters plastered over scuffed white walls, like, Be Strong and Courageous! Do Not Tremble or Be Dismayed for The Lord your God is with you, Wherever You Go. Joshua 1:9. Beige plastic folding tables had been set up end-to-end on both sides of the room, and they were covered with packaged napkins, plastic cutlery, paper plates, off-brand paper cups, and rows of mustard, ketchup, and relish, next to bulk packages of hamburger and hot dog rolls. Thirty well-dressed women milled around the basement, inventorying and repacking the supplies and food, filling the room with chatter, laughter, and friendship, but none of them was young enough to be Linda Wall.
“Rita,” Mary asked her, “is Linda here? Do you see her?”
“Why, no, I don’t. Let me just check into that for you.” Rita tapped Sister Christina on her padded shoulder. “Sister, have you seen Linda? I was sure she’d be here tonight.”
“Oh she will be, the Deaconess just called. She and Linda are on their way back from Belmont Plateau. They had to make sure the permits were all in order.”
Rita frowned. “Oh, how late will they be?”
“The Deaconess didn’t say, but Lord knows, we have plenty of chores to keep us busy. Excuse me a sec.” Sister Christina waved at an older janitor with a sour expression, threading his way through the cheerful women. “Brother Washington, how are we coming with those folding chairs? Did you count ’em up for us?”
“Yes, Sister.” The janitor nodded, frowning in a cranky way. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”