by Gary Sapp
trouble you. Thank you for your time and attentiveness. My name is Thomas Pepper. Where I go I hope the truth is never far behind.”
He stepped away from the stage at last and walked past a mass of reporters who were blocking his path.
He welcomed the silence that greeted him as he neared the ready room in an effort to retrieve the rest of his belongings. The intern had tears in her eyes, but greeted him with a smile nonetheless. He noted that another mass of reporters were retaking their place again as they had done before he made his speech.
“Why are they still hanging around? I told them that I would not be speaking to them today. I’m sure you guys have a panel of talking heads to go on the rest of the night with their so called expert opinions and analyst, but those kind of events don’t usually draw this type of crowd—“
“Look over there, Mr. Pepper.” The intern pointed a long manicured nail to the other side of the floor of the building. “The next speaker is coming—there she is right now. You almost missed her.”
Lucy Burgess.
Thomas stormed past the intern and nearly sprints over to where another underling is walking Lucy into the studio where this night had begun for him an hour ago. I won’t play second fiddle to anyone in this town, not even you Tommy Boy. He remembered Bernard Lott telling him in his office. But he had met with Lucy since then…he’d slept with her since that night… and she had said…
“What are you doing here, Lucy? I thought we agreed the other night that you wouldn’t do this.”
Lucy gave her overbite a workout when she smiled fully. “I told you that I would think about it, Thomas.” She straightened out his tie for him. “I never promised you anything.
Thomas grabbed her arm with some girth. “What do you know about Chris Prince? Is it truly worth the lives you are about the risk to reveal this terrible secret about him?”
“I guess the audience will have to make those decisions on their own, darling.” She kept the smile, but loosened herself from his grip. “You’ve had your opportunity at telling your version of truth—and the repercussions that maybe born of it. It’s my turn, darling. All is fair in love and war. We had love the another night…at least our version of it, now it’s time for a little healthy competition.”
The underling looked unsure of what to do next. “Five minutes, Miss Burgess.”
Lucy told the younger woman that she would be ready and asked her to allow Thomas and her a moment alone.
Afterwards Lucy said: “You were wonderful the other night, Thomas. And I mean that—“
“Lucy—“
“Let me finish, Thomas.” She said with a serious look on her face that Thomas Pepper had never seen before. “As I was saying…you were wonderful the other night. You were passionate. You were energized. You were the Thomas Pepper that I’ve always known, but you were also the man that I knew that I would never truly have. The other night is the way that I want to remember us.”
Thomas smirked. “So you are ending it?”
“No,” She said “We both are. You are done with me, Thomas, and you don’t even realize it yet.”
“What are you talking about, Lucy?”
“Bill officially served me papers today.” Lucy’s face took on the sad look that she’d shown him at the mayor’s estate when she first stated her martial problems to him. “In six months I will be officially a single woman. And single women have no use in your life.”
“Lucy—“
She put a finger on his lips…and rubbed them with some affection. Was that mist in Lucy’s brown eyes or was that a trick of this room’s lighting. “And I’m done with you, Thomas. I just told you that you were wonderful the other night. You were passionate.” The underling held up two fingers so that they would clearly see it. “But you committed the one unforgivable sin that even whorish married women cannot forgive.”
He searched his memory banks long and hard but frowned when the appropriate withdrawal of recollection escaped him. “When your moment of pleasure crossed the threshold towards ecstasy—“
“I called you, Serena.”
“You called me by that bitch’s name.”
The intern chimed in: “We are ready for you, Miss Burgess.”
“Well, duty calls me, darling. No hard feelings.” She held out her hand as her smile highlighting her glorious overbite returned for Thomas one final time.
Thomas tried to hand her back the hotel key she’d given him but she told him to keep it as a symbol of what they’d had if for no other reason she could think of.
She stood on her tippy toes and kissed him with some affection on his left cheek. “Together we will live forever…yet apart.” She left him in his silence, but looked over her shoulder at him after only a few steps. “Remember, darling, where Thomas Pepper goes—the truth is never far behind.”
Chris
Special Agent Christopher Prince’s business cell phone rang.
“Damn, Christopher,” Angel’s voice sounded distant in the receiver. “You are a hard man to reach. Turn on your TV.”
“I’ve already saw Pepper’s press conference, Doc. The shit about the president is incredible, but otherwise I don’ think he really enlightened anyone to anything that the FBI doesn’t already know—“
“I’m not talking about that news conference. You need to be tuned in to what’s being said—and who it’s being said about right now.”
“What channel?”
“Any of them…all of them, you should just pick one.”
He apparently had missed whatever Angel was flustered about. A bushy haired brunette was wrapping up her evaluation of Lucy Burgess’ information about…him and his personal life. He saw pictures of himself, pictures of Denise and Erica flashing across his 52 inch screen in full HD. They were certainly much older photos, especially of him. He still had hair on his head and face and he was probably ten to 15 pounds lighter around his middle.
The one word that was flashed up on the screen describing his family at that time was: Dysfunction.
He bit his lip. He cursed. The next byline read: A Key FBI Agent at the center of the 411 investigations was once taken off duty himself for alleged molestation charges against his then minor teenage daughter. One of the commentators said that while nothing was ever proven, there were already legitimate concerns to whether this man should have taken the lead on these cases anyway. He is the brother Xavier Prince. Agent Christopher Prince’s mind might tell him to be loyal to the bureau but where does his heart lead him? It is the old adage…blood versus water.
The bushy head woman spoke up again. She hesitated to dismiss these molestation charges so easily. She told the others to remember what Thomas Pepper said to them all before Lucy Burgess spoke. If the United States government was in a cover up in a president’s death, what makes anyone think they wouldn’t protect one of their own who was a pedophile? She went on to say that this man, Chris Prince, was a victim of sexual assault himself. And everyone knew how those types of behaviors recycle themselves. A boy goes from being abused to manhood of being an abuser. This pattern had been proven before.
The other commentator wasn’t finished however. He asked the panel how stable could Chris actually be? And then they showed Chris in a shouting match with the bystanders who were lined up at the crime scene where he and Angel hypothesized about the black action figure and what it represented. Then they replayed his throw down with Muhammad Clark at the prison down state. The editing left out the portion for viewers to see Clark grabbing him first before Chris retaliated. Finally, someone had sold the Times some still photos of his face burrowed in frustration with one of the doubles of Serena Tennyson when he and Angel had caught up and bumped the car she was driving. One of the commentators warned the audience against allowing children to see the stills they rolled across the scene next. They showed the dummy Serena pinned under the car bleeding to death. The last photo was of him clenching his fit and gritting his teeth.
He looked angry.
/> He looked like a man on the verge of losing his control.
“How in the hell did this happen?” Chris yelled into the receiver and instantly regretted it. “Why would anyone leak this type of information now? I told you that very few people know about what truly happened because of Erica and her lies.”
Angel snorted. “It wasn’t me, Christopher.” She said in a defensive tone. “I swear that it wasn’t.”
“Yea…I know that, Doc. I’m sorry that I yelled—“Chris’ personal cell phone beeped. “Look, someone’s ringing me on the other phone. I’ll call you right back.”
“Make sure you do.” She said. “I want to help you get to the bottom of this.”
He hung up the business phone and answered his personal one on the third ring but no one was home. Damn, I probably took too long with Angel. It rung again, Chris caught it on the first ring, but again Chris was only greeted with silence. He even answered it before it could complete one ringing cycle and yelled hello into the receiver. This time someone was laughing between breaths of saying something humiliating and degrading about him being trimmed up by Keaton all those years ago.
Now his business phone was ringing.
“Anything you have to say to me,” He yelled nearly at the top of his voice. “I want you to say it in person. Don’t hide behind a cell phone.”
“I won’t need to.” Agent Sheridan said to him almost conversationally. “I already have you on the phone, Agent
