Blood of Angels (6 page)

“This is a moving story, no doubt,” Ginder says. I realize I haven't actually breathed in twenty or thirty seconds. Rita's litany of horror paralyzed everybody in the room, except, thank God, Ginder. “We are not presently on the streets of Khartoum, Ms. West,” he says. “We are in the city of Nashville, Tennessee, where Mr. Bol is being held on very serious crimes. Is the court to understand that you have asked for this bail hearing because the internal psychology of the defendant is so tortured that conventional incarceration constitutes cruel and unusual punishment?”

“It's deeply traumatizing to him, Your Honor. I would recommend that Bol be remanded to house arrest, with electronic monitoring.”

“I see. Well, I sympathize with the young man's story, but unless you have something more, I'm going to have to deny your client bail.”

Rita takes this well, like the professional she is; she must have known that no matter how good she was on this day, she didn't have a chance. I sneak a look behind me, wondering how the wall of young men are going to take the news that Bol isn't getting out. But the woman beside Rita has not come to court this day to be a part of the furniture. She stands up, uninvited, and addresses the court. Under normal circumstances, this would have the bailiff escorting her out of the room before she had a chance to finish her first sentence. But it's a bond hearing, so Ginder merely looks at her like she's a kind of unwanted pest.

“Your Honor,” she says, “I have something to say on this matter.”

Rita looks pained; this isn't in her ideal script for the day.

“And who are you?” Ginder asks.

“I am Fiona Towns, the pastor of the Downtown Presbyterian Church.”

I look up. The voice is lower than I expected, with a sexy rasp.
Pastor. Apparently, they're making them a lot more attractive than I remember.

“Fine institution,” Ginder says.

“Thank you, Your Honor. I'm here to speak on behalf of Moses Bol.”

“In the future, I'd recommend you wait until called on to speak.”

“You weren't going to call on me,” she says.

Ginder gives his unpleasant look. “All right, Ms. Towns. Go ahead.”

“January 7, 1994, Your Honor.” This is followed by a long silence. Rita slumps down in her chair a little, like she wants to be somewhere else.

Ginder looks at her blankly. “That's it?”

“There's also April 23, 1998. And October 27, 2002. I could go on, but I think you see my point.”

“I don't, as a matter of fact.”

“Those were days when people accused of crimes similar to Mr. Bol were released on bail. By you.”

Ginder's eyes narrow; he senses he's walking into a trap, but he doesn't see the teeth yet. “Every case is unique, Ms. Towns. I'm sure that if those individuals were granted bail, it's because the circumstances warranted it.”

He raises his gavel, and Towns says, “As far as I can tell, Your Honor, the only circumstances unique to those defendants were that they were white.” The gavel stops in midair. I look up at the judge, as does every other head in the room, especially the media flacks. Ginder looks like he's been struck, then turns into stone. I see Gavin Davies physically lean forward, like he's a hungry dog and someone is unwrapping steak.

Ginder sets down his gavel and looks out into the black sea, weighing his next move. He's been a judge for almost twenty years, and he knows how things play in the media, how context is everything, how there isn't going to be a way to put into print how stilted and artificial things are in his courtroom right now. Ginder isn't a racist, not by a long shot. But whether or not Joseph Ginder is a racist isn't what's going to play in the newspaper tomorrow unless the next words out of his mouth are the right ones. All that's going to come across is that he lets white people out for the same crimes he keeps black people in for, and that is going to play like shit.

Ginder is very angry now, but not yet so angry he can't think. He locks onto Towns, eye-to-eye, knowing it's too late now to throw her out; he's entered the zone where appearance is everything. The standoff doesn't move for several seconds, until a barely perceptible smile creeps into his face. I recognize the “I'm brilliant” look; I've seen it a hundred times. He relaxes a little, leaning back in his chair. “October 27, that last date you mentioned,” he says. “You say that was the same crime as Mr. Bol?”

Towns doesn't need to look at her notes. “The crime was aggravated assault with intent to do bodily harm, and first-degree murder, Your Honor.”

“What bail did I set on that occasion, Ms. Towns?”

“You set bail at seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Ginder nods sagely. “How about the date before. What was that one?”

“April 23, 1998. The crime in that instance was rape with special circumstances.”

“What was the bail in that instance, Ms. Towns?”

“Four hundred thousand dollars.”

“All right, Ms. Towns. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll set bail for Mr. Bol for one million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Mr. Bol is facing both counts, and unless my math is rusty, that's the combination of the two.”

“It is, Your Honor.”

I look over at Stillman and smile; Bol couldn't raise fifteen hundred dollars' bail, much less nearly a thousand times as much. A million dollars to Moses Bol might as well be a billion. Ginder is smiling when he grants the bail and states court is adjourned. I'm impressed; it's a deft move that is scrupulously fair and deflates the racism charge without actually confronting it. Ginder stands—shit-eating grin on his face—and the gallery rises with him.

At which point, Fiona Towns asks, “Where do I pay?”

“
THAT DIDN
'
T GO WELL
.”

“No,” I say, “it didn't.” I stare at Stillman, who, along with David Rayburn, has gathered with me around the district attorney's conference table. It's two hours after Stillman and I left the courthouse. The last few moments there are a blur, but at least I managed to recommend to Ginder that he arrange for security to escort the Africans out of the building. The judge, still shell-shocked by the pastor's ploy, managed to pull himself together enough to get four officers to walk out the Sudanese in a long, protected line. The Nationites, angered that the man they considered Tamra Hartlett's killer would soon be walking the streets, hissed at them as they passed. The officers gave the Africans a fifteen-minute head start, but eventually, they had to let the lions loose. Bol was remanded to Towns's care, and his monitored house arrest will be at the church, not at Bol's apartment in Tennessee Village, which is right next door to the Nation.

“I did a Nexis search on Towns,” I say. “I got six hits. It's definitely interesting reading.”

“Who is she?” Rayburn asks.

“She took over the Downtown Presbyterian Church about eight months ago. The place has been on the verge of closing for years. Towns showed up, and it's become a hangout for the hard-core peace and justice types. She's got the eco-crowd, antiglobalization, the whole thing. It's more like a political party than a church. Apparently, she thinks a part of her calling is posting bail for murderers.”

“But how did she come up with the million bucks? What is she, independently wealthy?”

“She got Bol out on a property bond. And you won't believe on what property.”

“It must have been the fucking Taj Mahal,” Rayburn says.

“It's the church's parsonage.”

Rayburn stares in disbelief a second. “Are you shitting me? Can she even do that?”

“She had the power of attorney with her,” I say. “The address is 625 Glendale Avenue, Belle Meade.”

Rayburn whistles. “Belle Meade? The lots alone are worth a fortune over there.”

“She had the last tax appraisal with her. A million-five. The original deed was dated 1956. Probably cost a tenth of that back then.”

“OK, so the place is worth the money. How the hell does she sell this to the church?”

“Towns got a new church constitution passed giving her the right to dispose of church property however she sees fit. And she sees fit, apparently, to use it as collateral against the future court appearance of Moses Bol.”

“The hell she does.” Rayburn is fuming, feeling things unravel with disturbing unpredictability. “Where did this woman come from, anyway? Does anybody know?”

“Basically, she's little Miss Protest. You remember when the state legislature tried to cut funding for low-income housing? That bunch of people who tried to storm the House chambers? She was a part of that crowd.”

“And she's a preacher?” Rayburn asks. This offends his sense of order. In his thinking, preachers marry, bury, and stay the hell out of the way the rest of the time.

“Yeah,” I say. “But the ultraliberal, radical-fringe stuff. Do you know she conducted a funeral in absentia for Bishop Romero?”

“Who's Bishop Romero?”

“Murdered in El Salvador by government death squads during the Reagan administration.”

“Reagan? That's twenty years ago.”

“Romero never got a proper funeral. Towns wanted to give him one. They had a casket, the whole thing. That was at her previous church.”

“Where was this?”

“Muskeegee, Michigan.”

“I bet that went over great in Muskeegee.”

“They fired her for it.”

“Good for them. How the hell did she end up in Nashville?”

“Far as I can tell, she worked for some homeless agencies in Michigan, did a lot of volunteer work. Ended up coming here to work for the Center for Peace and Justice over at Vanderbilt University. That lasted about a year, until the grant ran out—”

“Friggin' delusiacs,” Rayburn interrupts.
Delusiac—
a combination of
delusional
and
maniacs—
is his favorite, made-up word for any over-the-top political movement he encounters. “All these friggin' delusiacs hate the government,” he says, “but they don't have any problem taking money from it.”

“Anyway,” I say, “she quit when they ran out of money, and took the job at the DPC. She's been there ever since.”

“She's a nut,” Rayburn declares.

“Yeah, well, she's got a degree in public policy from Oberlin and a master's in theology from Harvard. So maybe it's better not to underestimate her.”

Everybody looks at each other a second. Rayburn raises an eyebrow. “Shit.”

“Care to know what her dissertation was about?” I ask.

“What?”

“The impact of the death penalty on race relations in the South.”

A moment of silence, as pieces of a puzzle slide into place. “Son of a bitch,” Carl says. “You think she's behind this thing with Buchanan?”

“Pretty interesting coincidence,” I say. “There's only one way to find out for sure.”

“It's not like you can just walk over and ask her,” Stillman says. I swear to God, if he doesn't stop smiling, I'm going to deck him.

“Any reason why not?” Carl asks.

Rayburn sits thinking a moment, then nods. “Thomas,” he says, “I'd say it's time to see if this preacher keeps office hours.”

 

IT
'
S NEARLY THREE
before I can leave for the Downtown Presbyterian Church, or DPC, as it's known locally. There's the usual pile of paperwork, and I need to make a dent in it now, before the Buchanan thing takes all my time. The church is only about eight blocks away from my office, and I decide to walk. My experience with preachers is next to nothing, having previously been limited to two: the first, who buried my father in a flat, dusty monotone, and the second, a flowery Episcopal priest who married me to my ex-wife. At least he looked like something, with robes as ornate as his speech. Since then, I haven't darkened a door to a church. Towns, to me, is still a mystery. Unlike Rayburn, I don't assume the worst about people without an actual reason. All I know about Towns right now is that we'd have a not particularly interesting argument about presidential politics and whether or not McDonald's or Disney or whatever other big corporation is the embodiment of evil. Why she's willing to risk her church on springing Moses Bol is still up in the air, as far as I'm concerned.

I make it to the church in about ten minutes. I stop at the bottom of the concrete steps, looking up at the structure. The building is framed by two brick, rectangular towers that rise sixty feet on either side of a surprisingly narrow main building. To reach the entryway you pass between two formidable pillars of white stone that rise almost to the roof. Above them is a portico covered in strange hieroglyphics. Behind the pillars are three substantial, aged wooden doors, the kind of doors it would take a battering ram to knock down. The whole is covered with decades of city pollution and grime. Apparently, the wealthy white southerners who once maintained the place have long since retreated to the safety of the gated suburbs. Making matters worse, what was once an imposing structure now crouches forlornly between skyscrapers of metal and glass, and in the face of so much progress, the church looks decidedly out of place.

There are about twenty steps, and I take them two at a time. I try the middle door, and I'm surprised to find it open. This particular block is fairly well traveled by the city's homeless community, and I figure in a place like the DPC there are quite a few artifacts that aren't nailed down. I enter a wide inner chamber with walls of white rock. There's a bulletin board across the chamber, with a number of broadsheets tacked to it:
Inter-Asian Alliance for Justice;
Lesbian Council on Reproductive Rights; Latinos Unidos.
A dozen or more groups have posted meeting times and agendas. Apparently, the Reverend Towns has put out an all-points bulletin for every victim group in the city, and the downtrodden are answering the call.

A second set of doors opens to the sanctuary. I pull one of them open, step in, and stare. For a moment, I wonder where I am. The room is dark and brooding—the only light streams in through stained-glass windows badly in need of cleaning—but it's not so dark that I can't make out great towers of what look like sandstone rising at the opposite end from the floor to ceiling. Egyptian writing and symbols are visible on the walls, and a substantial molding that rings the entire room is covered in depictions of palm trees. The stained-glass windows depict scenes from the Egyptian desert, rather than the acts of apostles. The ceiling is composed of interlocking panels, each painted as part of the sky. After a few moments, things fall into place: there is the sky above, sandstone pillars around me, scenes of palm trees and Egyptian writing everywhere I look. The sign may say the Downtown Presbyterian Church, but I feel very much as though I were outdoors, in some kind of Egyptian temple.

The sanctuary is large and tall, with the ceilings thirty feet above me. The front of the room, where the altar is located, is a good hundred feet away. I walk toward it, the ancient, wooden floor creaking under my steps. Over everything is the palpable sense of dust and abandonment. I can feel in the air that this is a place of the past. The days when this place was filled with the city's elite are long forgotten.
Now,
I think,
it's a haven for Fiona Towns and her band of delusiacs.

I'm halfway to the front of the sanctuary when I hear a sound behind me. I turn, and a disheveled man is standing fifteen feet away, watching me calmly, as though he materialized out of thin air. “You're Thomas Dennehy,” he says. He's five foot ten, with gray eyes, black hair, a heavy beard and mustache, inexpensively framed glasses, and a Ft. Lauderdale Beach ball cap pulled down over his eyes. He's practically invisible, enveloped in a too-large, well-worn trench coat, which makes no sense considering it's ninety degrees outside.
An addict,
I think.
Hard to tell his age, he's so weathered. Thirty? Forty-five?

“You're Thomas Dennehy,” he repeats. “Assistant district attorney of Davidson County.” The man has the pungent odor of a man a long time between showers.

“Do I know you?”

He smiles. “No. I help out Fiona. Odd jobs. There's no staff anymore, you know.”

“Big place,” I say. “Must keep you busy.”

He looks at me silently for a while. “I'm not the janitor,” he says.

“Sorry.”

“It's OK, Skippy. Sum me up by the clothes. Never mind.” Behind the glasses his eyes are angry, glittery dots.

“Listen, can you tell me if Ms. Towns is around?” I ask. “I'd like to speak to her.”

He points to a door behind the altar, his gray eyes not blinking. “There's a hallway to the pastor's study,” he says. “Just knock.”

“Thanks.” He turns and glides away to the other side of the church, then passes through a doorway and vanishes.

The floor at the front of the church is covered with worn carpet the color of blood. At the altar, I pass a large Celtic cross sitting on an old wooden table. The cross is made of iron, and there are runes written on it in a language I don't recognize. I press open the door behind the altar, stepping through into a dingy but ordinary hallway beyond. The floor is industrial tile, and although it's clean, it's well worn. Only half the lights are illuminated.
Saving on electricity. Word is there's practically nobody left in this money pit.
I walk forward, not sure where I'm going. Along the wall there are pictures of previous congregations, dating all the way back to some monochrome pictures from the early nineteen hundreds. The early crowds are dour and grim, dressed in dark clothes and serious expressions. Things get better in the forties and fifties; the congregations look happier, and the flattop haircuts in some remind me of my father. He would have looked at home in that crowd, except for the Bibles. In the late sixties the crowds become noticeably smaller, and by 1980 what was once a thriving enterprise is down to less than a hundred souls. They have a determined look, but there's no denying the grim realities of so few in such a large space. The last picture is in 1987.
Almost twenty years ago. Apparently, it got too bad to want to preserve in a photograph.

I go up three short steps, turn left, and confront a large door made of dark, polished oak. I reach out and rap on the door, making a sharp echo in the empty hallway. I hear a female voice. “Come in.”

I open the door, and Fiona Towns, who is balancing precariously on her tiptoes on a short stepladder, her right arm outstretched with a book not quite high enough to be replaced on its high shelf, her left arm straight out for balance, artlessly, noisily, and over several agonizing moments, loses her footing, and—frozen for a moment in midair, which gives her the chance to make angry, surprised eye contact—proceeds to tumble to the ground in a cacophony of books, arms, legs, and dust. She looks back up at me from the floor. “Ah. It's Mr. Dennehy, from the government.”

Nice beginning. Very low-key.
“I'm sorry. It happened so fast, and I just—”

“
Stood
there,” she says, still on her butt.

She's right; for some reason, I was rooted to the floor, unable to move. “Sorry. Really, I'm sorry.” I step forward reflexively and reach down to help her up. She ignores my hand and gets on her knees. “Do something useful for a change, Mr. Dennehy. Pick up books.”

I crouch beside her, picking up volumes and stacking them on the desk beside her. I glance at a couple of titles:
Father Pio, Mystic, Confessor; Saint Anthony of Padua,
followed with something by the Society of Psychical Research in England. She has a light musk scent; it's subtle, but there's enough to convince me she wants it noticed. “A little light reading?” I ask.