“It’s not a matter of backing down.”
“Yes, it is. That’s exactly what it is. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Dutch is offended. “I don’t know what it’s like? They ask me crazy-ass questions too, Gina, but you don’t see me rising to their bait.”
“That’s because your questions aren’t personal like mine are. They don’t question your character the way they question mine. They don’t disrespect you with the same level of disrespect they show me. You’ve never had to prove yourself, over and over, like I have.”
She exhaled, grabbed her braids and tossed them from the front to the back of her head, a frown enveloping her pretty, troubled face.
Dutch exhaled too. “I know it’s a problem, Gina.”
“It’s more than a problem,” Gina said with some agitation of her own, tears now staining her eyes. “Don’t try to minimize it. They’re just taking this too far, Dutch, as if I’m made of stone and they can treat me any way they please and I just have to take it. It’s like they don’t want to give me credit for anything! I’m a trained attorney, a highly educated woman, but they talk of me as if I’m some ignorant, back water hillbilly who wouldn’t know sophistication if it bit her in the butt! And I know it shouldn’t matter, and I know I should just screw them and their racist foolishness, I know all that. But it does matter, Dutch.”
Tears were beginning to drain from her big, brown eyes. “Every time they try that crap on me,” she continued, “I feel like I have to call them out on it. I can’t just let them get away with that. Because I know the deal. I know it’s not about me anymore. It’s about those little black girls in Newark and places like that who looks up to me, and expects me to never sell out, to never go along to get along as if their pain doesn’t matter. It does matter, Dutch. That’s why I can’t let the press get away with their nonsense. I’m going to call their asses out every time they even think about undermining my character, and what I represent. Because it’s not just about me anymore.”
Dutch was by her side before she could finish speaking. He leaned down, lifted her up, and wrapped her into his arms.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said as he held her, as she began to sob in his arms. He understood where she was coming from. He knew what she had to endure since hitching her wagon to his. And what angered him most was that he knew what a dynamic First Lady she could be. He knew what a great contribution this country was missing because of the caricatures the press chose, instead, to paint of her.
“I didn’t mean to hurt our child, Dutch,” Gina was saying. “I was joking. I never dreamed they would take me seriously.”
“I know that, sweetie,” Dutch said, now himself feeling like an ass for being so hard on her. When he knew it wasn’t her fault. When he knew that his wife wouldn’t do anything to harm him or their child or anybody else for that matter.
But there was more to this story, and the fear of what could happen to her was eating him alive. They were trying to destroy her, to take away every ounce of confidence and courage and sense of self-worth she still had within her. They wanted to cut her down to size, to put her back in her place, to, in essence, knock what they perceive to be her uppity black butt back down a peg or two.
But he would see them in hell, he thought ruefully as he tightened his grip around her, before he allowed anyone to come close to bringing this wonderful, spirited, dignified woman down, or anywhere near some sordid ground.
And what about Max? What about his best friend, a man he loves? Did that insane move he made on Dutch mean that he saw Gina as his competition? Did he have Gina in his crosshairs too? It would half kill Dutch, but would he have to fire his own best friend?
That was why, when he entered the Oval office a few minutes later, after reassuring Gina that everything would be all right, after kissing his son good morning, he had made up his mind.
“Get in touch with Liz Sinclair,” he said to Allison as she followed him into his office. Max was usually with her, as they both always sat in on his daily intelligence briefings. But not this morning.
“Liz Sinclair, sir?” Allison asked. “Are you sure, sir?”
Dutch looked at her as he rounded the historic Resolute Desk and stood there. “Yes, I’m sure. Why would you ask me something like that? Why would I bring it up if I wasn’t sure?” Dutch then caught himself, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Set up a meeting,” he said to his press secretary.
“Yes, sir,” Allison said, as she moved toward the small desk against the side wall. Liz Sinclair was the last person on earth she felt was needed in this White House during their seemingly unending state of turmoil and crisis. But what could she do? The president liked strong, independent, mouthy women apparently, if that wife of his and now his decision to bring back Liz was any indication, and all she could do was salute and do his bidding.
But that didn’t mean she liked the bid.
“And Ally,” Dutch said, and Allison turned around.
“Yes, sir?”
“Where’s Max?”
“He hasn’t made it in yet. Which threw me when I found out since he’s always the first staffer here. I mean he’s always the first, sir, you know how protective of you and your image he is. Obsessively protective if you ask me.”
Dutch wanted to cringe when she said that, but gave away nothing.
“I called his house,” Allison continued. “He said he overslept, if you can believe that? Max oversleeping? I found myself asking if he was ill. But he said he wasn’t. Said he just overslept. He’s on his way.”
Dutch nodded. Another headache he had to eventually deal with, he thought, one he knew couldn’t possibly end well, not after that out-of-nowhere move Max had made on him Saturday.
But he couldn’t deal with that right now. He had too much already to deal with right now. He therefore removed his suit coat, pressed the intercom button on his desk, and notified his secretary that he was ready; that she could send in his director of national intelligence and the rest of his intelligence briefing team.
SEVEN
Liz Sinclair sat behind her desk at Sinclair Consultants, the majestic L.A. skyline serving as backdrop in the floor-to-ceiling window behind her, and tried to get yet another client to listen to reason. Yes, he was a pro football player. Yes, he didn’t deserve all of the negative press his divorce was generating. But it was his future he had to think about.
“If you want to keep those sneaker deals and all of those other endorsements,” she said, “you had better rehabilitate your image as this wonderful role model, and you had better do it like yesterday. Forget that divorce and concentrate on yourself. Because when they pull the plug, Barney, and deem you no longer endorsement worthy, no longer a role model to those little inner city kids that somehow manage to plop down the big bucks for those shoes, there will be no second chance. Not in the endorsement game.”
But Barney still balked. He sat in front of the desk, staring at this gorgeous black woman with the hazel eyes, a woman who would never mix business with pleasure although he tried on countless times to get her to at least go out on a date with him, only to be rebuffed. But he still wasn’t buying her remedies.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his thick thighs, his anger with his soon-to-be ex-wife driving his need to seek revenge, rather than to bother with the upcoming fallout from the bad publicity his divorce was garnering.
“We should destroy her image the same way she’s trying to destroy mine,” he offered. “That’s what we ought to focus on: a campaign to discredit her.”
Liz, however, wanted to roll her eyes. They always wanted revenge. Even at their own peril. She was a tough cookie too, and wanted what she wanted, but she was a smart tough cookie and knew how to pick her fights. She knew how to wait for just that right time. For just that right moment. What Barney didn’t seem to understand was that now, in the midst of the character assassination he was undergoing, was nowhere near the right time.
“The American public
doesn’t give a flip nickel about that wife of yours,” Liz reminded him. “Who is she? You made her what she is today.”
“Thank-you!” Barney agreed with a smile.
But Liz remained dead serious. “She doesn’t have a sneaker deal to protect. You do. That’s why your agent sent you to me. It’s your image we have got to rehab, not worry about hurting your wife.” Her desk intercom buzzed. She pressed the button. “Yes, Madge?”
“Pick up,” Madge said through the intercom.
“If you knew my wife,” Barney said, “you’d understand how I feel. She’s telling my lawyers she wants a half of everything I own. Half!”
Liz held up a long, manicured finger as she picked up the telephone. “What is it, Madge?” she asked her secretary. “I’m still in a meeting.”
“You have a confidential phone call from Allison Shearer, ma’am.”
Liz hesitated. What in the world would the president’s press secretary want with her? Especially after the way Liz was forced out of the Harber administration a mere year into his first term.
She looked at Barney. “I have to take this, Barn,” she said, prompting him to stand to his feet. “I’ll get with your agent and we’ll come up with a game plan.”
“I still say we should give her a taste of her own medicine.”
“We’ll see,” Liz said, more to get him out of her office than to appease any of his delusions of revenge. When the door closed, she leaned back in her chair. “Send the call through,” she said to her secretary.
And when she found out what the call was about, when she found out that the president wanted to meet with her, that he wanted to see her again, her heart began to soar. And just like that, she thought with the kind of sneer that often made her clients tremble, she was back. Back with Dutch, with the only man she had ever loved, where she belonged. And nothing, not Allison Shearer, not Crazy Max and his shenanigans, not even that new wife and kid of Dutch’s, was going to stand in her way this time.
Not this time.
The photo release became the news of the day. At first there was a mild reaction, as many cable news commentators focused more on how beautiful Little Walt was and how smart it was for the Harbers to release the photo.
But by late afternoon, the conversation changed. Dutch and Gina, along with LaLa, Christian, Max, and Allison, were seated on the couches inside the West Sitting Hall watching the evening newscast, when one commentator, on CBS, put it bluntly:
“Although the baby is a beautiful, healthy baby boy, and I am sure the president and First Lady are quite proud, he looks, by and large, like a light-skinned black child. We can’t escape that fact, nor ignore it. Walter Harber, Junior looks far more black than he looks white. That photo therefore, in my opinion, does nothing to squash the controversy. If anything, it has only fed the beast. Because the fact of the matter is, if you look objectively at that child, he could be Roman Wilkes’ baby or any other non-white male’s child. That’s not to say he couldn’t be a white man’s child, he could be. But if by releasing this photograph the White House thought to curb the controversy, to somehow convince us that he looks just like his parents, it didn’t work. He doesn’t look like either one of them, if truth be told. Which begs the question: who, really, is this child? Is he the product of a surrogate mother or was there some in vitro fertilization going on here? This photo raises more questions than it answers. Nothing short of a DNA test will curb this controversy.”
They could hardly believe it. Every one of them just sat there. And then Gina, perhaps stunned the most, spoke up. “A surrogate mother? In vitro fertilization? DNA? Are these people for real?”
“It’s economics,” Allison said. “Scandals sell newspapers and drives viewership so they keep the controversy going.”
“But there’s no controversy!” Gina said with anger. “Dutch and I had a baby boy. That’s all there is to it. Why in the world would we go out of our way to have a child to live in this fishbowl when we don’t even want to live in it ourselves?”
“But that’s the thing,” Max said, avoiding Dutch’s eyes, although Dutch was staring at him. “The American people are wondering why you guys did it. Why would you not use protection and avoid bringing a child into the fishbowl, as you call it.”
“I forgot, okay? After that attack in Texas I was so stressed out and I forgot. But for them to suggest---”
“They’re only suggesting the obvious, Gina.”
“And what exactly is the obvious?” Gina asked Max. She couldn’t stand him and she was convinced he hated her. “Are you saying our child is some kind of mistake?”
“Isn’t that what you just said?” Max said as he looked at her.
“I said I forgot to take the pill. That’s all I said.”
“And you’ll be wise to remember that,” Dutch said to Max.
Max looked at Dutch, and then clamed up.
“Dutch said it wouldn’t work,” Gina said, oblivious to the tension that was swelling between her husband and his chief of staff. “He said if we give those vultures an inch, they’ll want a mile.” She knitted her brow, a worried look crossing her face. “Nothing is going to satisfy them.”
Dutch put his arm around her. “That’s why we won’t try anything else.”
“Won’t try?” Max asked. “But, sir, you can’t just let this controversy stand. We have the midterms coming next year. The Democratic party has got to be strong next year, for our candidates to win.”
“You mean candidates like you?” Gina asked.
Max glanced at Dutch and then looked at her. “I haven’t announced anything about running for public office.”
“But that’s what they’re saying all over the internet,” Gina said. “That you’re planning to announce it.” Then she frowned. “You would leave Dutch at a time like this to fulfill your own political ambitions?”
“I didn’t say anything about leaving anybody,” Max snapped and his tone angered Dutch.
“You had better watch how you speak to my wife,” he said to his friend.
Max stood up, agitated. “We need to talk, Dutch.”
“Not now we don’t.”
“We need to talk now, Dutch.”
Dutch looked at him, and it was only then did Gina, and everybody else in the room, see the tension. “I said not now,” Dutch said in a tone that brook no debate.
Max stared at his friend, pain searing him, shame piercing him, and then he left.
Gina looked at Dutch. “What was that about?”
Dutch ran his fingers across his forehead, shaking his head in a kind of I’m not going to discuss that look that Gina knew so well. She backed off.
“But the point that Max was making, sir,” Allison said, “is a good one. We have to fight back. Perhaps if you and the First Lady could go on television--”
“No,” Dutch said.
“I know that’s right,” LaLa said and everybody looked at her. “Listen, I know what you’re saying, Ally. I know the natural thing to do is to fight back. But this is their child we’re talking about. This is their baby. And all of these vicious rumors. I mean, I wouldn’t put my child in this either. No way. They believe what they want, but I wouldn’t do it.”
“Thank-you, Loretta,” Dutch said, “because I couldn’t agree with you more.” The Residence phone rang. Christian moved to answer it. “I consider this controversy over, as far as my administration is concerned. We will get back to the people’s business and we will, as that commentator just said on the news, stop feeding this beast. No more comments about it, no more photos will be released, or videos or anything else. And if they don’t like it, tough.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Christian said, his hand over the phone. “Mr. Roman Wilkes is downstairs. He would like to see you or the First Lady.”
Gina’s heart began to pound. The idea that a good man like Roman Wilkes could be caught up in this craziness was one of the worst things about this entire ordeal.
“Go and get him, Chris,�
�� Gina said without conferring with Dutch.
“Wait a minute,” Allison intervened as Christian hung up the phone. She looked at the president. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir. He’s the man they’re claiming to be the father of your son. That’s why Max felt no contact should take place ever again. At least not until this thing blows over. Public opinion is already running negatively against you as it is. This meeting with Roman Wilkes will only make it worst.”
“I hate to say it, G,” LaLa said, “but I agree with Allison. What if the press gets wind of this visit? Y’all wouldn’t hear the end of it.”
Gina understood their concerns, but that still didn’t make it right. She looked at Dutch. He was tired, she could see the strain all over his handsome face, and it would be easier for him to not allow Roman anywhere near them.
But she knew her husband, and she knew he was never the kind of man to take the easy way out.
“My wife,” he said to both Allison and LaLa, “will not sacrifice her friendship, with a very good man by the way, on the altar of public opinion. To hell with public opinion. Go and get him, Christian,” Dutch ordered and Christian, smiling, went to get him.
Gina leaned closer against his big, strong body. Sometimes she could hardly believe how blessed she was to have a man like him.
By the time Roman dispersions Wilkes entered the Residence, the air in the room had gone from a kind of unsure hesitancy to outright tension. But Roman was accustomed to being the center of other people’s derisions. His job, as the criminal defense attorney to the stars, most of whom were generally guilty as sin, often landed him at odds with the public. His only concern, at this point, was Gina. She didn’t deserve to be treated this way.
“Good evening all,” Roman said as he entered, his bright white smile against his dark skin as alluring as it had been a decade ago when Gina first fell in love with him. Their love affair was brief, Roman wasn’t the settling down/one woman type, but their friendship had been enduring.
DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN Page 6
