Two days later, the two of them parked and waited at the entrance to Greenwood Village. At four minutes before ten, a car pulled up in font of the first house and parked and another car parked a half a block down. A few minutes later, a red, white and blue mail truck stopped in front of the mail boxes at the first complex, inserted his mail in the individual boxes, then moved off. Father Danny’s camera was rolling the entire time. Five minutes later, a man got out of the first can, walked across the street, sat on a bench at the bus stop, lit a cigarette and waited. After he finished his cigarette the man stepped in front of the mailbox like he was going to check his mail and went down the row of boxes deftly removing the brown Social Security envelopes.
“Are you getting this,” asked Davy.
“Every single motion,” smiled Danny.
The man returned to his car and moved two blocks up. As he parked in his new location, Pastor Davy moved his car a half block up. Just as he parked, the second man calmly went to the corner, smoked a cigarette, then stripped the mailboxes of every brown envelope in a casual, unconcerned move. If either man saw the two pastors, they paid him no mind. Twenty minutes after the mailman departed from Greenwood Village, every brown Social Security envelope delivered that morning was in one of the cars on its way from the complex and from its true owner.
“It’s over,” said Davy. “Did you get it?”
Danny held his camera out to the side and bowed in the front seat. “I wish to thank the members of the Academy, the actors and everyone else who made this minute possible.”
“Fantastic!” shouted Davy.
As they rode along, Davy noticed that Danny kept replaying the disk. He would play the disk, rewind it and play it again.”
“You’re going to wear that thing out before we even get a chance to use it.”
“No, it’s not right.”
“What do you mean it’s not right?”
“Exactly what I said, it’s not right.”
“Why, it shows every detail, you even have closeups of the guy’s faces and some of the house numbers. I think you did a great job.”
“Oh yea, the video is fine, it’s first class, but it’s not enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Those guys are going to have an attorney. And, that attorney is going to clean ‘em up and have them looking better than anybody in either one of our choirs.”
“Okay.”
“Your honor, there has been a terrible mistake. These lads weren’t taking anyone’s Social Security checks. My goodness, that is ridiculous. The boys had sent out invitations to the folks in the neighborhood to come to an ice cream party and when their mamas discovered the party was scheduled at the same time as their Bible study, they told the lads they had to get those invitations back and schedule the part another day. Those boys didn’t know they weren’t supposed to take the invitations out of the mailboxes. They were just doing like their mamas told them to do. They know now that was wrong and they feel real bad about it. But the boys were purely innocent, Your Honor. They were just doing as their mamas told them.”
Davy pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. “What can we do?”
“I’m right, and you know it.”
“Oh yes, you’re definitely right, so what do we do?”
“We need those envelopes. We need to prove those bangers knew what they were stealing.”
“The federal offense won’t stand up?”
“Nope, how many times have you gone over the speed limit rushing to someone’s aid? You broke the law, but if a cop had of stopped you, after you explained it what would he have done?”
“You’re right, he would wave me on.”
“Right. There’s laws then there are laws... even for the gangs.”
Still, what do we do?”
“My suggestion is the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Mr. Watson.”
“Mr. Watson, we have evidence of what you were telling us. The gang members were going from mailbox to mailbox pulling out Social Security checks like they were picking cherries. But we have a problem.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Why did you watch them?”
“We wanted to see what you had told us.”
“They will know who told you. They will kill me.”
“We promised you we wouldn’t tell, and we haven’t.”
“Then what good is it? What does it matter if you saw them taking our checks? What good is it if you don’t tell somebody?”
“We promised you we wouldn’t tell who told, which we won’t, but we didn’t promise you that nothing would be done. Something is going to be done, that too I promise you.”
The old man looked at the two ministers. “You two are preachers, why would a preacher want to get involved in this mess? Preachers don’t get involved in this kind of thing.”
“I’ve got two answers for you, Mr. Watson,” said Davy. “Maybe they should get involved and, we do get involved.”
The old man looked Davy in the eye then Danny. “What do you need to know?”
“These gang members,” asked Danny, “Where do they hang out?”
At first Watson was silent. He appeared to be thinking. Then he said, “There’s a dump of a building toward the end of Third Street. They hang out there. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Watson.”
Watson began to speak, but stopped.
“I know,” said Danny, “we didn’t hear it from you.”
The old man smiled and nodded.
“Okay, stop by Mrs. Peele’s next.”
“Why, did you forget something?”
“Sort of. Just stop in front and I’ll run in. I won’t be a minute.”
They stopped at Mrs. Peele’s and Danny ran inside. He came out opened the door and threw something into Danny’s lap.
“A Roman collar, you want me to wear a Roman collar?”
“Around here, most of the gangs have a strong Latin influence. Latin influence means what? Catholic church. I don’t think that crowd is going to be too intimidated by an Episcopal priest and some Baptist wearing street clothes ain’t gonna’ cut it.”
“I take for granted we’re headed to the gang’s hangout.”
“You got any other plans?”
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