by Osborne, Jon
“You’d cut off your baby daddy?” John asked incredulously. “A little too late to be pulling that crap now, Jazzy.”
Jasmine giggled and put a finger to her lips to hush him. “Hey, keep your voice down, dummy. I didn’t even tell my parents yet.”
“Well, when are you going to do it?”
Jasmine sighed. With her mother up for reelection again in the fall, an illegitimate grandchild probably wasn’t at the top of her list of campaign bragging points. “Not sure yet,” she said. “Maybe tonight.”
John stopped suddenly and grabbed her by the hand. The look of pure love in his eyes was almost more than Jasmine could bear.
“Marry me, Jasmine,” he said.
Jasmine’s breath caught in her throat. “What?”
Before she knew what was happening, he was down on one knee in the middle of the walkway and opening up a small, hinged box. A tiny diamond sparkled inside, winking up at her brilliantly in the bright sunlight overhead.
“Marry me, Jasmine,” John repeated, more urgently this time. “I love you with all my heart and soul and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. With you and our baby. I want us to be a real family.”
Hot tears rolled down Jasmine’s cheeks. Her boyfriend looked ridiculous, just like he always did, but that was precisely what she’d always loved so much about him. She tried to speak, but no words would come out. The tightness in her throat made even simple speech impossible.
Swallowing away the huge lump of emotion lodged in her throat, she tried again. “Yes,” she whispered.
“What was that?” John said loudly, cupping a hand to his ear. “I couldn’t hear you all the way down here. Could you please repeat that?”
Laughing and crying at the same time, Jasmine pulled him up to his feet and threw her arms around his shoulders. “I said yes, John Mullins, you big dummy. I’ll marry you.”
He smiled and looked up into her glistening eyes. “Does this mean that you love me, too?”
Jasmine nodded. “Yes, you big goofball. I love you with all my heart and soul.”
John Mullins smiled again, showing off the tiny dimples in each of his cheeks. “Good. That’s exactly what I needed to hear. Now let’s get the hell out of here and go make a life together, sweetheart.”
They held hands all the way out to the crowded parking lot, swinging their arms back and forth in unison as visions of bottles, rattles and cute little plastic baby booties danced gleefully in their heads. As they walked, Jasmine wished that she could somehow bottle this moment and save it for all eternity. This was it. This right here was the happiest moment of her entire life. At least until the baby came. And they were going to be a family. A real family. Her, John and the tiny little person growing inside of her that was probably no bigger than a pea yet. It was everything she ever could have asked for.
And quite a bit more, too.
CHAPTER 108
Dana pulled up to the arrivals lane at Hopkins airport at precisely ten a.m. Blankenship was already waiting for her on the curb.
“Hey there, good-lookin’,” he said, pulling open the back door to the Protégé and tossing his carry-on bag inside before slamming shut the door again and sliding into the passenger seat up front. “Miss me?”
Dana smiled and checked her side-view mirror before pulling away from the curb, easing her vehicle into the slow-moving traffic. “You know it, handsome. Get any sleep on the plane?”
Blankenship shook his head. From the corner of her eye, Dana could see that his dark brown eyes looked puffy and bloodshot. “Nope, still not a wink,” he said. “And, like it or not, I need to crash. Hard. I’ll probably be out like a light just as soon as my pretty little head hits the pillow. Anyway, what’s new in your world, girlfriend? Talk to Bill Krugman yet?”
Dana nodded as she took the entrance ramp for I-90 West and headed toward Blankenship’s hotel downtown. Pressing down her foot against the accelerator, she merged with the traffic on the highway and brought her partner up to speed on Krugman’s directive that they should reconnect with the Cleveland-based private investigator, Angel Monroe. “But since you’ll be off in La-La Land very shortly,” Dana finished up, “I guess I’ll make the initial contact myself.”
Blankenship frowned and cracked a window to let some fresh air into the car. “Krugman won’t like that, Dana. You should probably wait until I’m available to act as your backup. These are some pretty dangerous assholes we’re dealing with here.”
Dana shrugged. “True, but Angel Monroe isn’t one of them. Besides, like you told me back at Lee Jarvis’s apartment in Yonkers: I won’t tell if you don’t. Anyway, I don’t plan on getting into any especially dangerous situations today. Just gonna have lunch with the lady and talk things over, see what else she might know. And with you not around to gum up the works, I’ll probably be able to strike up more of a womanly bond with her, anyway. It’s the right thing to do, Bruce, and you know it. I can’t just sit on my hands and wait for these pricks to murder another pregnant woman.”
Blankenship nodded. “Fine, but call me if you need anything. I’ll sleep with my cellphone next to my head.”
“I’m not going to need you for anything.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Just call me, Dana.”
“Dana.”
“Hilarious, Seinfeld. Just call me.”
“Is that an order?”
“Do you take orders?”
Dana smiled. “Nope.”
Blankenship rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think so.”
CHAPTER 109
Two full minutes passed before Angel finally scraped herself off the pavement and returned home from Edgewater Park.
She soaked in the bathtub for a solid hour, punishing herself, letting the soap burn deep into her wounds and relishing the exquisite pain.
She hated herself for doing it, but she dressed in an African-style dress before heading out the door to pick up a newspaper at the 7-Eleven down the street. Dana Whitestone had promised revelations in today’s edition, and Angel was itching to find out what they were.
As she walked to the store, Angel asked herself why she’d worn the dress. Was it because her people were from Africa?
No, it wasn’t. Her people were from Cleveland.
Was it because she was trying to identify with people who shared the same skin color as her?
Maybe, but there were still plenty of black people out there that she hated, too, with Razor Diggs at the very top of that list.
Angel shook her head, trying to reason herself out of her ignorance, out of her utter stupidity. No good. She just wasn’t listening to herself. She knew that her thought patterns were illogical – dangerous, even – but she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. A rage that had lain dormant her entire life had reared up its ugly head with a ferocity that scared the living shit out of her. She knew that hating an entire group of people based on the color of their skin made absolutely no sense whatsoever, knew that only a fucking idiot could ever think it did. Knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was no different from people hating her based on the color of her own skin.
So why the hell had Angel worn the goddamn dress?
She just didn’t know.
But she did know that it felt good.
CHAPTER 110
Five minutes after John Mullins had puttered off in his dilapidated Chrysler (but not before he’d stolen several more hugs and kisses and the quick cop of a feel under her shirt that she’d quickly batted away with a good-natured laugh), Jasmine tossed her schoolbooks onto the nylon canvas covering her mother’s campaign signs in the backseat and slid behind the wheel of her silver BMW.
Angling the luxury car out of the parking lot, she waved goodbye to the security guard as she passed through the wrought-iron gates of the venerable university. Ten minutes later, she was on the freeway and headed for home to face what she hoped wouldn’t be the second coming of the Spanish Inqui
sition.
Jasmine sighed. Maybe her mother would look more kindly upon her unexpected pregnancy now that she and John would be getting married. One could always hope, right? And wasn’t that the old lady’s campaign slogan, anyway?
Keep hope alive!
Jasmine smiled and looked down at the tiny rock sparkling on her finger. A million dollars couldn’t have bought a more beautiful stone, and good thing, too, because John couldn’t have afforded even a fraction of that amount. His ever-dwindling guitar collection now made perfect sense to her. She was probably wearing a few of his favorite Fenders and Stratocasters on her left hand right now.
Jasmine almost laughed out loud when the song came on over the radio. Reaching out a hand, she turned the volume all the way up and sang along with Michael Jackson at the top of her lungs while he worked his way deftly through a live version of Black or White. The appropriateness of the tune was almost too much to take.
“But if you’re thinkin’ about my baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white…”
When the song wound down, Jasmine leaned forward again to lower the volume. Then she froze in her seat as she straightened back up and felt the cold metal of a gun barrel press firmly into the soft flesh at the base of her neck.
“Nice song, nigger. I’m a Waylon Jennings fan, myself, but let’s go see how that shit plays down South.”
CHAPTER 111
Ten minutes after dropping off Blankenship at the Wyndham, Dana’s cellphone sounded again. She dug it out of her purse and flipped it open. “Dana Whitestone.”
“Agent Whitestone, I’m so glad I reached you. It’s Shelley Margolis. How are you doing today?”
Dana’s heart stopped beating dead in her chest. “I’m just fine, Dr. Margolis. And you?”
“I’m doing just fine, as well,” the child-care advocate answered. “Just fine, indeed.”
Margolis paused and corrected herself. “Actually, that’s not quite true. As a matter of fact, I’m doing quite a bit better than just fine at the moment. I’m doing absolutely great. I’ve got some very happy news for you, ma’am. Pending the completion of the necessary paperwork, your adoption of little Bradley Taylor Thomas has been approved. The Board just finished its voting. It was unanimous all the way down the line – ten ‘ayes’ to zero ‘nays’. Congratulations. You’re officially going to become the little boy’s mother.”
Dana stopped breathing. Her heart flipped over in her chest. Hot tears flooded into her eyes, blurring her vision. “So, it’s sure thing then?” she squeaked.
Margolis laughed. “Yes, Agent Whitestone, it’s a sure thing. Congratulations again. The board is convinced that you’ll make an absolutely fabulous mother.”
Somehow, Dana managed to choke out her thanks through the painful sobs of joy racking her body. After all of this time of being alone in this world, she’d never be alone again. Even after she was dead and gone and buried, she’d still live on in her son’s heart, and then through her grandchildren’s hearts. The realization was almost too much to take. It was the closest that anyone could come to being truly immortal.
It took her a full hour to calm down enough to get her reeling mind back to work. Punching in Angel Monroe’s cellphone number again, she took a deep breath through her nostrils in an effort to get some oxygen flowing through her system; still stunned completely stupid by the exhilarating news she’d just received. She was going to be Bradley’s mother.
Blissfully, this time the Cleveland-based private investigator answered her phone. Things were going swimmingly already today, weren’t they? They sure as hell were. And that would have been putting things extremely mildly.
Dana took another breath.
So far, so good, and things could only improve from here on out, right?
Right?
She supposed that only time would tell.
CHAPTER 112
Angel had planned on waiting until she got back home to read the newspaper, but the headline on the front page grabbed her hard by the throat and wouldn’t let go.
Sitting down on the curb in front of the store, she read through the entire shocking article in just under five minutes, having trouble breathing the entire time while her reeling brain tried desperately to process the horrible words wavering in front of her eyes.
DIGGS MURDER MAY BE LINKED TO OTHERS
BY PETER GALLOWAY
Plain Dealer Correspondent
Twenty-two-year-old Sasha Diggs was all set to leave the country on a Rhodes scholarship when her murdered body washed up on the banks of the Black River in Elyria on Wednesday. Diggs was four months pregnant. Her breasts had been carved off and her uterus removed.
Three thousand miles away, Betsy Campbell of Elk Run, Wash., had just won a national flute competition when she too became the victim of brutal murder. The 24-year-old woman was six months pregnant. Her breasts had been carved off and her uterus removed.
Two hundred miles down the Pacific coastline, 35-year-old bank president Marjorie Trimble didn’t show up for work in Sacramento, Calif., on Thursday. Trimble’s murdered body was discovered in her home the next day. She was two months pregnant. Her breasts had been carved off and her uterus removed.
Twenty-five-year-old lawyer Laura Settle suffered the same grisly fate earlier this week in New York City. The sensational murder of 26-year-old professional basketball player Kimberly Anderson down in Houston brought the death toll to five.
Young, black, successful and pregnant. It was a death sentence for all five of these women.
And for their unborn babies, as well.
Still more chilling, information has recently come to light that there may be more to come. The Plain Dealer invoked Sunshine Laws to obtain a copy of a hate-filled letter sent to the Cleveland Police Department following the discovery of Sasha Diggs’s body. The text of the letter – sent by a white-supremacist group calling itself “The Brotherhood” – follows in its entirety:
To Whom It May Concern:
This is for all the nigger-lovers, race-traitors, nation-destroyers and the niggers themselves. We are The Brotherhood. We are legion. We are everywhere. We are everyone.
We are a group of concerned White citizens who hail from all walks of life. We are lawyers and doctors, scientists and politicians, policemen and women. We are truck drivers and auto mechanics. Firefighters and construction workers. We live in huge metropolitan cities and small towns across America alike, and we’ve banded together to put an end to what we consider a very disturbing trend.
Decades of race-mixing have led to an upheaval in society that is entirely unacceptable to our ranks. Where once there was civilization, now there is only chaos. Where once there was natural order, now there is only an ugly hodge-podge of mutants, animals and other soulless freaks intermingling with proud White America.
This problem stems from a mixing of genes. It has come to our attention that the niggers have been adding the genes of race-traitors in an effort to create a more powerful people, a mutant creation capable of accomplishing things that the niggers never could have accomplished solely through their own inferior DNA.
Race-traitors are equally responsible for this ugly trend. Rest assured, they will be dealt with in the appropriate manner when the time is right. But for now we are concentrating our efforts on the niggers, specifically the ones with aspirations of more completely infiltrating proud White America.
Let it be known then that it is our solemn vow to eradicate as many of these viruses as possible before they can be brought to term. To do this, we must destroy the very environment that harbors them. A nigger woman’s uterus is a profane place by nature, but when joined with pure White seed it becomes even more shameful still.
Enough is enough.
It is time for proud White America to stand up for what is rightfully ours, for what has been given to us by God Almighty Himself.
Let the murders of these five women serve as our warning to you. These exterminations will continue until the
natural order of the world is restored. In the meantime, our group has taken custody of Sue Lynn Pepperton’s daughter. The Alabama senator will be given exact instructions on how to get her pregnant daughter back alive when the time is right for our purposes.
Signed,
The Brotherhood
Angel’s pulse crashed in her wrists. Her mouth went dry. Her skin turned clammy despite the merciless sun that was beating down hard on her head from high overhead in the clear blue sky above. That weird, indefinable shame blushed across her chest and throat again.
The warm summer wind whipped hard down the street, wrapping her thin dress around her legs as she walked back to her house in a daze with the newspaper folded beneath her left arm. Just as she’d feared, this was why the FBI had been called in to investigate the murder of Sasha Diggs. Sasha had been just one in a long string of women brutally butchered so far.
And the Brotherhood had promised more to come.
And soon.
Angel was still walking home on unsteady legs when her cellphone rang in her purse. Cursing, she dug it out, even though she really wasn’t in the mood to talk with anybody right now.
“Hello?” she said, wearily.
“Hey, Angel. It’s Dana Whitestone. How are you doing today?”
Angel stopped walking in an effort to minimize the sound of the wind blowing into the mouthpiece. “Special Agent Whitestone,” she said. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“It’s Dana, Angel, remember?”
Angel shook her head. She had remembered. But even considering the strong kinship that she already felt with this woman, somehow calling her by her first name right now just didn’t fit into her current worldview of white people. Cracker, honky or ghost, maybe, but certainly not something as familiar as Dana.
“What’s up?” Angel asked, deflecting the question.
