“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes ma’am. You’re my sister. Oh, and the First Lady of course.”
“And you’re Marcus Rance, my father’s son, the convicted murderer of innocent people.”
Rance’s grin left. He glanced at the Secret Service, at Christian, and then he looked more suspiciously at Gina. “What’s all this about?” he asked.
“I wanted to meet you. I wanted to see how you could come from a great, wonderful man like my father, and do the things you did.”
“Great and wonderful?” Rance said incredulously. “When was he so great and wonderful? Before or after he left my mama while she was pregnant with me? Before or after she had to take him to court just to get a little child support, and even then he denied paternity? Before or after my mama died and those state social workers tried to get him to come and get me and he wouldn’t. And I was put in foster home after foster home where I was beaten, falsely accused, and raped so many times that I wanted to kill the next motherfucker who so much as looked at me funny. But of course our daddy had nothing to do with all of that. He was too busy being great and wonderful.”
He exhaled. Looked her up and down. “Try living with those kind of odds stacked against you, sis, and I’d bet what side of that desk you would have been on today! No rich, white president would have wanted to fuck you then!”
The secret service quickly moved for Rance but Gina stopped them. She was shaken by his harsh past and by her father’s part in that harshness, but she willed herself not to show it.
When the agents backed off, she looked Rance dead in the eye. “Are you saying that, in light of your background, your behavior should be excused?”
“That’s what you saying. I’m not saying that. I know I messed the fuck up. I know I did some stupid shit in my day. But the crime they’re accusing me of, I didn’t do.”
Gina smiled. “Oh. You’re innocent. I see.”
“I didn’t say anything about being innocent. I’m not innocent. But I didn’t do no drive-by and kill those people, I’m saying that. Because it’s the truth.”
Gina stared at her brother.
“Why you think they commuted my sentence?” he asked. “Because they know it too. Look at the evidence, if you don’t believe me.”
“What will I find if I look?”
Rance seemed to move to the edge of his seat, prompting an agent to move closer to him. He glanced at that agent, bitterly, but then looked at Gina. “You’ll find that I was at work when they said that drive-by happened.”
“Work?” Gina blurted out. “What work? According to press accounts you were a drug dealer when that crime occurred.”
“But that ain’t the truth. Yeah, okay, I slung drugs when I was a kid, but I been out of that. I was working all kinds of jobs since then. I was working at Winchell’s when that drive-by happened. Had clocked in and everything. And made my rounds like I always do.”
“What’s Winchell’s? And what kind of rounds were you making?”
“Winchell’s is a furniture store in Abilene. I deliver furniture, that’s what rounds I make. And I was delivering furniture when they said that drive-by occurred.”
“Are they saying you shot those people in your delivery truck?”
“No! They say I shot them in my car, and that car been stolen for like two weeks.”
Christian almost smiled. That story was absurd to even him. But Gina and even LaLa, to his surprise, didn’t seem to find it absurd at all.
“Did you report your car as stolen?”
“Yeah I reported it! But them police trying to say they don’t have no record of it.”
“And did your employer testify that you were at work?”
“He testified. Said I clocked in. Then them prosecutors twisted him all up till he said he couldn’t verify for sure that I stayed on my delivery route the whole time, even though the family I delivered the furniture to said I got there at the time I was supposed to get there.”
“So they believe while on your way to that delivery you went and committed yourself a drive-by shooting?”
“That’s what they saying. But I would have had to ditch the truck, take my partner with me--”
“What partner?”
“The employee who delivered furniture with me,” Rance said, amazed that she didn’t know every detail of his case. “His name’s Jason Craig. But because he ain’t upstanding either they didn’t believe his report at all.” Then Rance looked Gina dead in the eye. “There are so many holes in this conviction, sis, you wouldn’t believe it. And they convicted me anyway. It was like my past was on trial, not my present, not my future, not whether or not I did what they said I did. It was terrible.”
Gina could see the horror in his eyes, as if he was still amazed himself by what he perceived to be a monumental miscarriage of justice. And she didn’t’ dismiss his claim out of hand because she couldn’t; because in her nearly decade work with Block by Block Raiders in Newark, she’d seen even worse.
“What’s your lawyer’s name?” she asked the man whom she still couldn’t reconcile as her brother.
NINE
Victoria and Max stood at the lunette window and watched as Dutch and Caroline walked in deliberately slow strides across the Nantucket estate. It reminded both of them of the old days, when the pair was so much in love that it was ridiculous to Max even then. At least Dutch was deeply in love. Max had already discovered and Victoria eventually found out, that Caroline loved Dutch, but so many other men, too.
“They make a very loving couple,” Victoria said, as if the past was nothing more than a truth to be forgotten.
Max looked at her, and then back at the couple. He couldn’t forget that easily. “An attractive one, in any event.”
Victoria, however, scoffed at his insinuation. “She looks better with him than that Regina person any day of the week, I assure you of that.”
Max looked at Victoria. “You don’t like Gina?”
“Do you, Maxwell?”
Max shrugged his shoulders. “She’s growing on me, how’s that?”
Victoria snorted. “You don’t like her, either.”
“I didn’t say that, Vicky. She’s been an overall asset to Dutch. I mean, she loves the guy and the guy loves her. Besides, it was her quick thinking and legal smarts that saved his bacon at that press conference last week.”
“What save? She threatened Jennifer Caswell with a lawsuit, something ambulance-chasing lawyers like her are great at doing: Tossing threats. But as the First Lady tossing these threats around? Oh, come now, Max. It’s ludicrous to even consider.” She stared at the twosome on the estate grounds. “But then there’s Caroline,” she said. “And although I have my issues with her, yes, I do, she’s still head and shoulders above that hood rat.”
Max looked back out of the window too, as Caroline carefully slid her arm through Dutch’s. That chick, with Victoria as her mentor, knew exactly what she was doing. “You do understand,” Max said, “that Caroline herself is half-black?”
Victoria continued to look out of the window. “I know that there were once rumors to that effect, vicious rumors that her biological mother was black--”
“It’s no rumor, Vicky,” Max pointed out, “it’s a fact. Your husband, God rest his soul, had his people investigate it. I led that investigation. She was adopted by white parents, she was raised as a white girl, but her biological mother, the woman whose circumstances forced her to give that child up for adoption, was a black woman.”
“Be that as it may,” Victoria said, “but at least it’s well hidden. At least Caroline, unlike that Regina person, doesn’t flaunt her blackness.”
Max looked at Victoria. How in the world did Gina “flaunt” her blackness? By being black? By living as a black? Or maybe she just felt like he did that Gina could at least tone it down a bit. But then again, unlike Max, Victoria Harber was supposed to understand these things. She was a champion of blacks everywhere after all, a liberal icon. Max in
wardly smiled. That was Victoria Harber for you: a woman who would give until it hurt to the poor, while all the while hating them for the very fact that they were poor.
“I need you on this, Maxwell,” Victoria said as she and Max looked at each other. “I know about your political ambitions. Yes, I know about that.”
Max was astounded. “I haven’t announced anything. I haven’t told anyone--”
“You were making the kinds of inquiries that take no rocket scientist to figure out. My spies figured it out. And even Walter doesn’t know, I’m aware of that too. But I know. I have connections you wouldn’t believe. Money gets you everything these days. And with that money I could financially assist those ambitions of yours. I could make your dreams come true.” Max turned toward her. She almost smiled at his eagerness. “But my money and my support doesn’t come free, Maxwell. There will be times when you will have to assist me too.” She looked him dead in the eye. “Understand?”
Making a deal with her was like dealing with the devil, but he nodded anyway. And looked back out of the window, at the president and his lady.
Caroline Parker aimed to worm her way back into the president’s life: there was no doubt in Max’s mind about that now. Her goal, aided and abetted by the president’s mother herself, was to use the sentiment of their past love to steal Dutch from Gina. What was surprising to Max, however, was that Dutch looked like a man so caught up in the grips of that past sentiment, so stunned that his first true love was back within his grasp, that he just might not mind being stolen.
The twosome sat on a bench in front of the lake, as Dutch crossed his legs and Caroline snuggled further into her thick sweater. A smattering of secret service agents, some visible, many not, blanketed the estate.
“Cold?” Dutch asked, knowing that he would be a poor judge of the weather right now. The shock of seeing her again still had him reeling, still made him feel almost infernal.
“A bit, yes,” Caroline said.
Dutch immediately removed his suit coat and placed it over her small, delicate shoulders. He remembered those shoulders; remembered kissing them and caressing them; remembered feeling so protective of them.
“Now you’re cold,” she said in her sweet, coquettish way.
“No, I’m fine,” Dutch said truthfully. “Cold is the least that I am.”
Caroline looked at him. “Still shocked?”
Dutch nodded. “That would be an understatement.”
“I know, babe.” Dutch looked at her. She used to always call him babe. “I just didn’t know where to turn. Talk about shock. That’s what I was in. My husband had really done a number on me.”
“Was it another woman?”
“No! He was very faithful. In some ways, I wish it was as simple as another woman.”
“Tell me what happened to you, Caroline.” Dutch said this with pain in his voice. “Why did you let me believe you were dead?”
“I was supposed to go to France to make sure everything would be ready for our honeymoon. That was the purpose of the trip; that was why your mother had arranged it.” Caroline looked away from Dutch when she told this lie: his mother had arranged for her to go to France, all right. But not to prepare for their honeymoon, as both she and Victoria were telling others, but for her to take up permanent residence at a Villa in Provence, France, where she would remain with five hundred thousand dollars cash from the Harber estate. If she resurfaced in any way, shape or form, those sex tapes, and there were many, would be shown to Dutch and the world, and she’d be castigated even worse.
But she wasn’t about to tell Dutch any of that.
“I felt as if I was under so much pressure,” she went on, “that I just kind of had a breakdown. I couldn’t come back.”
“So you stayed in France?”
“I stayed. I just stayed. The plane was leaving, and I was on the flight manifest, but I told the pilot to leave without me, that you had decided that I would stay for a few days longer. He didn’t question it, he just did what I instructed him to do and he and his crew left. I never dreamed there would be an accident.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I never dreamed that that poor man and his crew would be killed. But, as life sometimes would have it, it became the perfect cover for me. So I used it, yes, I did. I used it to my greatest advantage.”
She looked at Dutch. “I never meant to hurt you. But I was young and there was so much pressure on me. From your mother and your father--”
“And from me,” Dutch added for her.
“And from you, yes. I felt the pressure from you too. And everybody was billing this as if it was going to be the marriage on the century, from Nantucket to Cape Cod. It was just too much. I didn’t know if I was ready for all of that responsibility. So I cracked under the weight and just couldn’t face this place anymore.”
“Did you plan to stay away this long?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know, Dutch, I didn’t have a plan. I just floated around for a few days, staying in this villa and that villa, especially after I found out the plane had crashed and there were no survivors. I made the decision then to let that fact, that there were no survivors, be my new reality. So I just floated from there. By the time I met Pierre I was a different woman, Dutch. I was independent and was just glad to float. I didn’t want any responsibilities. But then I made the mistake of falling in love. We were married. And then the roof caved in.”
“In the form of his fraudulent business dealings.”
Caroline nodded. “Right. And just like I told you earlier, it just devastated me. I was left with nothing. I was literally poverty stricken. After divorcing him, I didn’t know where to turn. My parents, I guess I should say my adopted parents, had since died, I had no siblings that I knew about, so I reached out to your mother. And here we are.”
She covered her mouth as the tears returned, and she quickly stood to her feet. Dutch stood too, as he saw the emotion in her eyes.
“I never meant to hurt you, Dutch,” she said through her tears. “I was just so lost then, just so . . .” She leaned against his chest. At first he just stood there, not knowing quite what to do, and then he wrapped her into his arms.
His heart hammered as he held her. This was Caroline, not any woman. This was the first woman he had loved so completely that he gave his heart to her. He not only loved and wanted to marry her, but had every intention of marrying her. He had asked her, she had said yes, they had planned their wedding down to the last detail. Her trip to France was her and his mother’s idea, a chance for her to make last minute preparations on their honeymoon Villa.
For years a small part of Dutch blamed his mother for Caroline’s death; for the fact that she was the one who encouraged her to go on that trip, a trip that ended in that fiery, horrific plane crash. He never dreamed she wasn’t among the dead; that she had decided not to return to him. And he still could hardly believe that she was here, alive, and back in his loving arms.
Caroline knew by that look on Dutch’s face that her tears had hit a nerve with him. He still loved her. She saw it in his eyes. But did he want her? That was what she needed to know. And that was why, as she leaned closer into him, she purposely rubbed her body against his groin, rubbed it in the expert way she had perfected from years of being his woman, and being married to a man just as virile as Dutch. Was he still that virile? Did he still respond to her the way he used to?
Within seconds, she got her answer. He began to engorge so quickly, she thought with an inward smile, that she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if that thick, juicy manhood of his would have popped out of his zipper.
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