“Okay,” Ollie said, flipping through his notes. “Solid family. Father Bob Fletcher, he’s a mechanic, hard worker, well respected. Mother Georgene—housewife, used to be a third grade teacher before they had kids, but she’s been a full-time homemaker. She’s a gem, everybody says. Four kids. The youngest is six, then ten, then thirteen. All good kids, well behaved, not runnin’ with the wrong crowd. But here’s where it gets sad. They had an eighteen-year-old daughter.”
“Had?”
“Yeah. She died about six weeks ago from a heart condition. Really tragic.”
Clarence’s throat felt scratchy. “Her name was Leesa, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. How’d you know that? You read about it?”
“Was her bedroom on the front right side of the house?”
“Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“Check the autopsy report. Talk to somebody about her real cause of death.”
“What do you mean real cause of death? What are you telling me, Clarence?”
“That’s all I can say. Just check into it.”
Clarence drove Ty an hour south to the state penitentiary in Salem. They went through high security, including a metal detector, into the visitors room. The guard took an extra long look at Clarence.
They’d arrived half an hour early. Clarence sat quietly, tired of trying to engage Ty in conversation. He hoped this place would make an indelible impression on the boy.
Ellis was only two years older than Clarence. In 1972, the year Clarence graduated from high school, Curtis Mayfield’s song “Superfly” blared everywhere among black youth. In the movie of the same name, the main character, Priest, was a slick drug dealer out to make a million dollars so he wouldn’t ever have to work for white folk. Priest succeeded, riding off in his shiny El Dorado. To Ellis and thousands of other young black men, Priest became an instant cult hero. Ellis and his friends had been bouncing around like pinballs for years. Now they had a role model. And an opportunity—the drug trade was urban capitalism.
A grieving Obadiah had confronted Ellis time and again. “You’re breaking the law, but what’s worse you’re gonna hurt kids with this dope stuff. Work for an honest livin’. Don’t break your mama’s heart, boy. Learn you a trade and go into business for yo’self—a good honest business. I’ll help you, Son. I’ll do anything to help you.”
Ellis was smart. He knew all the arguments. He pointed out the Kennedys got their money bootlegging liquor during prohibition, and nobody cared about that because they were white. So why shouldn’t a black man get his foot in the door, since everybody was trying to shut him out anyway?
“Your sins will find you out,” Obadiah warned him. “When you cross God’s boundaries, there’s always consequences.”
Ellis became the prodigal son. He started by selling reefer, learning all the tricks, such as padding it with oregano to maximize his profits. Soon he graduated to aluminum foil packets of cocaine, with a much greater profit margin. He dabbled in acid, mescaline, Quaaludes, and speed. He dressed like a Priest wannabe, down to the platform shoes and crushed velvet outfits, wide-brimmed hats and maxi coats. He hung a gold coke spoon around his neck. He carried a piece. He cruised around in a red Cadillac. He and his buddies, several of them dealers, did the dap, a handshake greeting consisting of a series of syncopated motions, slapping each other’s palms, wrists, and elbows and playing out from there according to the improvisations of the moment. Ellis became all style, no substance.
For years Ellis got by. He spent nine months in jail and came out a stunning figure. He’d pumped iron three hours a day, his muscles bulging so he couldn’t button his shirts, his biceps unbelievably thick. He could curl one-hundred-pound dumbbells fifteen times as if they were paperweights.
Three months after he got out, Ellis was a seller again and got taken down on a big bust. Some white kid had died of an overdose, sold to him by a black who fingered Ellis as the original dealer. The white boy’s daddy was a politician and put pressure on the DA. Clarence was there when they arrested Ellis. He still remembered the clicks of the handcuffs, the wince on Ellis’s face that told him they’d closed on a fold of flesh, the awkward motion of his brother into the backseat of the police car. He remembered the officer’s hand on top of his brother’s head, pushing him down with an extra shove of contempt. Clarence vowed to himself he’d never get arrested, never go through that humiliation. Ellis was sentenced to ten years for three felonies—selling a controlled substance to a minor, armed robbery, and assault and battery. Still cocky he boasted, “Ten years—man, I could do that standin’ on my head.”
The lawyer said the ten years would mean he’d be out in three or four easy. But that wasn’t what happened. In prison, he got into more trouble. He swore to Clarence he was just protecting himself with a shank against a guy who was going to rape him. His time had been extended for that, extended again for attempted escape and for attacking a guard, extended five times. The time had added up. He’d now been in twenty years. He’d lived nearly as many years inside prison as outside.
Clarence thought about how smart Ellis was. For years they’d played chess through the mail. The brother who once joned on Clarence for wearing last year’s rags now had worn the same thing every day for nearly twenty years. He hadn’t been allowed out even to go to his sister’s funeral.
Clarence loved his brother, felt sorry for him. But he also felt sorry for all the kids hooked on the stuff he’d sold them, for all the kids who ended up stealing from their own families to support their addictions.
Suddenly on the other side of the glass came Ellis in his faded greenish-blue prison uniform. His muscles bulged, not quite as thick as Clarence’s, but much more defined. He still worked out a few hours every day. What else did he have to do? But his skin was dull, a prison pallor created by a world of fluorescent lights and drab prison colors.
“Hey, bro,” Ellis said to Clarence. “Good to see yo’ mud-ugly face.” He put his big right hand flat on the glass. Clarence matched his even bigger left hand to it on the other side.
“Hey, Ellis. I’ve missed you, bro. Remember Ty?”
“This my nephew? Hey, Ty. What’s happenin’?” Ellis put his hand up to the glass again.
Ty shrugged, looking as awkward as he felt. He put his much smaller hand up on the free side of the glass.
Ellis looked at Clarence, tearing up suddenly. “Wished I coulda been at the funerals, man.”
“I know.” Clarence had visited Ellis twice since the funerals, and he’d said the same thing.
“Dani and her baby too? It ain’t right man. Musta been Bloods. Had to be.”
“A witness says it was two Latinos.”
“Spics? What they doin’ in that hood? Lot of guys in here that knows the streets, what comes down in Portland. I put word out to see if anybody knows anything. Nothin’ yet.”
“I’m poking around myself,” Clarence said. “Let me know if you find anything.”
“Count on it, bro.”
“You been goin’ to the Bible study?” Clarence asked. He’d heard there was a great Prison Fellowship chapter here, a fine chaplain, and some growing Christian inmates. He always made a point of encouraging Ellis to get involved.
“Nah,” Ellis said. “Heard all that stuff when we was kids. Didn’t do me much good, did it?”
“Maybe you didn’t apply it. It’s not enough to hear it, you know.”
“That’s for sure, bro, that’s for sure. But I been talkin’ with some of the brothas, Nation of Islam, you know? Harley told me to look for ’em, said they’re in every prison, even in Oregon. He’s right. These guys are clean. Tough. And they don’t take no crud. They tell it like it is. Talk about bein’ black and proud, not lettin’ whitey push us around. Massa, that’s what they call these white prison guards totin’ around their shotguns.”
Ellis went off on a familiar litany, a scenario in which he was just a political prisoner rather than a hood who robbed a store, nearly killed a man, and wasted who
knows how many kids through drugs.
You sold the dope, you robbed the store, you pulled the trigger, you stabbed the guy in the pen. White man didn’t do that. It was you.
“Malcolm was a prisoner, just like I am. And he made something of his life. Maybe I can too.”
Clarence thought about Malcolm X. Well, his faith in Allah and the moral standards of Islam had certainly redirected his life. But Clarence reflected on the power of the cross to not just change you from the outside in, but the inside out. He wanted that for his brother. Yet he felt guilty that these days he seemed to be drawing on it so little himself.
Clarence looked in his brother’s eyes and saw the pain, the vacancy, the regrets, the hopelessness. He’d heard of prisons where they learned skills, where they could work their time off, subtract days from their sentences through hard work and restitution, get ready for the outside world. As far as he knew, Ellis had experienced none of that here. The state pen was a place to sit and stare and do nothing but think of yourself and loathe yourself and others and learn criminal skills to bring back to the outside world and hustle and hang with gangsters and look at pornography and watch shoot ’em up videos and pump iron to get ready to fight the pigs when you got out and be angry and lonely and think about knifing somebody or cutting your own wrists to get out of this hell.
“Ellis, Tyrone’s been hanging with some gangbangers. He’s been doin’ some dope. Anything you want to say to him?”
Ellis looked at Ty long and hard, his face first soft, then stern. “How old you now, Ty?”
“Fourteen.”
“Two years younger than I was when I got started. All I can tell you is, get clean while you can. I told myself I was gonna get clean, but I never did. You can be somebody. I got a stack of letters in my cell, letters from yo’ mama. She used to brag about your grades, what a good boy you was. Don’t throw it away. That’s what I did. And now look at me. I haven’t been out there since before you was born, six years before. Life here is hell. No privacy, always noisy, always television and radio. Threats and fights and hits. Guys drop their soap in the shower and they don’t dare bend to pick it up. It’s no life. Whatever you do, little bro, stop now.”
Even as he said it, Ellis saw in Ty’s eyes what fifteen years ago he’d seen in all the eyes around him, including those that looked back from the mirror. But he was determined to get through anyway.
“They talk big time, like ‘three hots and a cot man, that ain’t so bad.’ But you get in here and they forget about you, just like I forgot about my buddies in jail, my stickman Big Freeze and my homie Trig. The letters come at first—you get a few visits from yo’ girlfriend till she finds someone who can touch her. But except for Daddy and Clarence and Harley and yo’ mama, nobody stay in touch. I had a big rep, means nothin’ here. You mess up bad and get the double digits, you lose hope, boy, you lose hope. You do time alone, nobody there to help you. You think they yo’ friends, but they ghost on you. You get in trouble inside, they put you in solitary. I went three weeks not seein’ a human face. They take the staples out of magazines so you can’t use them as weapons. Every few years you dress up like a choirboy, spit shine and lotion yourself down, button yo’ top button, and try to convince that parole board you’re ready for the outside. And then you watch ’em look at the papers, the fights you’ve had and the drugs you’ve traded for and the time you popped a guard, and they close those folders, and you know they ain’t gonna forgive your sins, no way. Nobody gonna give you another chance.”
He stared straight through Ty, as if trying to find in him the one thing he might successfully hook on to. “When you see the sunshine out there, havin’ to stay in here, it’s like sittin’ on the electric chair at low voltage, dyin’ a little every day. I see the red in yo’ eyes, boy. I know you been doin’ the coke. Not too long though, huh? You not a cluckhead yet, but you be headed there. You listen to me, little bro, hear me now?”
“Yeah, I hear you, Uncle Ellis.”
“You tell da brothas in da hood, I’d rather be the geekiest guy on the street than the coolest sucker in prison. I’d rather be fryin’ the Big Macs any day than heatin’ up the cocaine, ’cause that’s what gets you here. Some folks say at least the black man rules in prison. Well, he don’t. No way. We don’t hold the keys. We don’t carry the guns. We don’t set the rules. It’s all a lie. You know how long it’s been since I seen the sky, boy? You know what it’s like to never see the stars for twenty years? You know what it’s like to live in a world without women? Ain’t natural. No mamas, no aunts, no sisters, no girlfriends, no wives. Most the guys here dealt drugs and robbed stores to impress the babes. Well, there’s no babes here. And guys start losin’ their manhood, and if you do, they’ll break you down, they’ll flip you sure as—”
Clarence shot Ellis a don’t-get-into-the-details look.
“Well, anyways, little bro, it ain’t normal. It ain’t a good scene.” He hesitated. “Make yo’ mama proud of you, boy. Make me proud of you.” The tears flowed freely now down the rough leather-brown face. “Don’t end up here spendin’ every day like I do, wishin’ I would have made my mama proud.”
The guard put his hand on Ellis’s shoulder and said “Time’s up.” Before Ellis stood up, he said to Clarence, “See you, bro.” He put his hand back on the thick glass, and Clarence matched it, wishing he could touch his brother’s skin, even for a moment.
Ellis looked at Ty one last time. “Stay outta dat chalk circle, little bro. ’cause if you run wid the bangers, chalk circle or this place is all you gots to look forward to.”
“Sure do wish Tyrone and Jonah was comin’ with us to the ball game,” Obadiah said to Clarence as they packed the car Saturday morning.
“Ty wasn’t interested. And Jonah’s in soccer all day. Maybe next time.”
They drove to Ollie’s, where two passengers got in the back. “You’re gonna love these seats,” Clarence bragged to his guests. “Front row, halfway between third and home. Perfect. There’s some payoff to all those years as a sportswriter.”
Jake had called and said Carly wasn’t feeling well, she and Janet needed him, so he had to cancel. When Ollie heard it, he asked Clarence if Manny could go in Jake’s place. Clarence had reluctantly agreed, and now Manny sat in the back next to Ollie. Obadiah occupied the passenger seat beside Clarence, absentmindedly humming spirituals under his breath.
“We’ve got some things on the case, Clarence,” Ollie said, as they pulled onto 1-5 north. “Want to talk now or later?” Ollie looked at Obadiah, not sure how it might affect him.
“Now’s fine. What’s up?”
“Well, turns out Leesa Fletcher died from a cocaine overdose. But you knew that, didn’t you? How?”
“Confidential source.”
“I reread the Trib articles,” Ollie said. “All they mentioned was congenital heart defect. Proves you can’t trust newspapers. I’ve done some calling around. I talked to Jay Fielding, the principal at Jefferson, and a couple of other people who knew her well. Everybody swears Leesa wasn’t a user.”
“So what are you thinking?” Clarence asked.
“One, I think she was the original target. Two, I think we’ve got another murder. They tried the drive by and blew it. They couldn’t do that one again, so somebody gave her bad crack.”
“Or good crack, just too much of it,” Manny said. “If they forced it on her, it wouldn’t be crack, probably an injection of cocaine and water. It’s a lot easier to inject someone than try to make them inhale crack at the right moment. Either way it shows up as cocaine in the bloodstream.”
“Was there a needle mark?” Clarence asked.
“Several in the left arm, but she took allergy shots,” Manny said. “Nothing definitive.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“Years ago I investigated a counterfeiting operation,” Ollie said. “I learned a bad counterfeiter always circulates these crisp new bills fresh off the press. People look them over real c
lose and often they figure out they’re counterfeit. But a good counterfeiter doesn’t do that. He soaks his new bills in a bottle of crème de menthe and some india ink, then dries them with an electric fan. Nobody takes a close look because they see these bills that look well-circulated. That way they blend in. The crime goes unnoticed.”
“Your point?” Clarence asked, knowing Ollie well enough by now to suspect there was one.
“Suppose the gang thing was a counterfeit, a cover for something else. I mean, it may have been bangers who pulled the trigger, but what if someone hired them, someone who figured we wouldn’t take a good look at it because gang crime is too common. The best cover is the one that looks most like something else, the one least likely to be thoroughly investigated over the long haul. Let’s face it, when gang stuff isn’t solved immediately, it tends to get buried under the avalanche. They weren’t counting on our persistence. Or yours,” he added, looking at Clarence.
“I’m still working on a profile of the Fletcher family,” Manny said. “Should finish it up Monday.”
“Anything you can tell me now?” Clarence asked.
“No. I need to put it all together first,” Manny said—rather stiffly, Clarence thought.
“Mariners and Yankees,” Ollie said. “Well, I’m pumped. I haven’t had a day off in three weeks. And I haven’t gone to a baseball game since I was a kid.”
“Where’d you grow up, Mister Detective?” Obadiah asked.
“Milwaukee. I was a Braves fan. Back then everybody talked about Mays and Mantle, but Hank Aaron just kept hitting those balls out of the park. Got his autograph one day. Biggest day of my life.”
“You knew him, didn’t you, Dad?” Clarence asked.
“Knew who?” Ollie asked. “Hank Aaron? No way!”
“Yessuh, I knowed the Hammer. He come into the league as a rookie my last season.”
“You played pro ball? The majors?” Manny asked.
“It was pro ball, all right,” Obadiah said, voice animated. “But not the majors. Not what the record books call the majors anyway. It was the Negro League. Shadow ball, folks called it. Henry Aaron spent his first year with us. So did Willie Mays.”