“What I need is this here drink.”
“I heard about Goodwin quitting today. J. T. King called me with the news on my way up. The way I see it, he doesn’t have a choice. Wouldn’t be the first time you bet on a dead horse.”
“Oh, I ain’t worried about that sorry bastard,” Virgil said. “I’m more concerned with Hampton Bridges right now.”
“The reporter?”
“Despite my best efforts, he’s still digging around, and this time I think he might become a real problem for us. Seems he was writing a book featuring yours truly, among others. He had a timeline running back to 1973. If Whit knew about that, he’d run us both to the woodshed. We’ve got that hard drive, but that ain’t accounting for what’s in that reporter’s head.”
“He’s relentless. I’ll give him that much,” Lucky said. He sucked in as much air as his chest would hold and blew it out hard. “Maybe I’ll have that drink after all.”
“You know where the glasses are. There’s some ice in that bucket over there on the bar.”
“Tell me something,” Lucky said, pouring himself a shot of whiskey over two cubes of ice. “Why not walk away now? Maybe Whit’s right. Maybe we oughta fold up the tent and call it a day.”
“It ain’t that easy, Lucky, and you know it.”
“So what’s the plan? What’re we going to do about Bridges? How much does he know?”
Virgil scoffed at the questions. “You know what we’ve got to do.”
“Can’t we just sue him and shut it down?”
“Too late,” Virgil said. “The ball is already in play.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
“Hey, what’s his wife’s name again?” Virgil said, tipping open the wood blinds, eyeing his still-muddy pastures.
Lucky was immediately confused. “Whose wife?”
“Bridges. You know, the architect?” Virgil said. “They got divorced last spring, but I hear they’re heating up the sheets again. What’s that gal’s name?”
“Ruby Claire Tolsen.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Hampton figured Tucker wouldn’t like it, but the lede to his latest story was already written and the rest was unspooling in his head. Despite his previous missteps, this was the only way he knew how to do the job. Give it everything you’ve got and let the chips fall where they may. There had been few rewards in that, not even an attaboy from his editors, other than his professional pride. The powers that be hadn’t seen fit to nominate him for a single journalism award over the years, and if Hampton was honest, he was still annoyed about that.
He hadn’t expected this in journalism school. He’d come to reporting when the Golden Age of Journalism was still afloat and the pay was better than decent. Hampton enjoyed those early years, before the crash came and reporters were treated like used-car salesmen. He blamed the internet and smartphone technology for that. Citizen journalism had its upside, but, generally speaking, Hampton loathed the thought of what it had done to his profession.
This new story would be another stake in the ground, and if Hampton had his way, it would run front page, above the fold with a two-inch headline. That was a pipe dream, he knew. But his sourcing was solid, even if most were anonymous. Fearing reprisals, few would agree to go on the record.
Documentation was everything, and he had enough to paper the way to the Georgia–Florida line and back again. He stayed up all night, strumming out and fretting over the draft copy, then hit the Submit button around 4 A.M.
He clutched Claire as she slept and felt her soft breaths whisper over his arms as the midday sun poured through the bay windows. He stroked her warm belly, nestling his chin over her shoulders, and let himself dream about settling down with her in a nice house with children.
Maybe, if they were lucky and their hearts allowed, there would be a new dog. So much had been lost, including Inman, whom they’d adopted four days after their wedding, and only now had he let himself hope for more.
Hampton was on his feet now, a man in full, walking without crutches. She was here, and that was good enough for the time being, though Hampton knew nothing about their lives would be the same once the next story was published. Even now, he knew there were things he could never tell her.
With Chanel sequestered away in Flint, she had begun to speak more freely and could not stop talking about Reclaim Atlanta. Hampton believed every word she said. The shadowy political action committee, as he suspected, was being operated out of a Buckhead post office on Pharr Road, and the League had been quietly buying up elections going back nearly forty years. Election law changed over the years, and thus, they shifted strategies.
Hampton rose quietly, dug his digital recorder out of his backpack, and listened to their conversation again.
“Ezra ain’t like doing business with them,” Chanel said. “But, he said that’s how things work. They bring the money. We bring the votes.”
“They? We?”
“White folk, black folk. Northside, Southside.”
“I thought that’s what you meant.”
“Only Ezra said that’s all changing now,” Chanel said. “Young white folks are filling up all these fancy condos, y’know? They’re taking Atlanta back.”
Reclaim Atlanta.
“And you think they did business with the mayor?”
“Her and everybody else.”
Hampton suggested that they might’ve been financing Goodwin.
“I don’t know nothing about no scheming-ass preacher man,” Chanel quipped. “My cousins used to go to his church. He wouldn’t use the benevolent fund to help people unless they were members and could prove they paid tithes for two years straight.”
“The church required bank statements?”
“No, but the church clerk down at City of Faith made my cousin bring in her tax returns after her apartment building burned down. Said he was praying for her, but she needed to give God the first of her harvest, and there were consequences for disobedience spelled out in the Scriptures. She don’t make but nine dollars an hour, plus food stamps.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Damn sure is. Heard about that baby of his too,” Chanel said. “With all these rumors floating around, wasn’t no way to say if it was true or not. I guess we know now.”
Chanel met Virgil Loudermilk once, she explained, maybe two or three years ago when she stumbled into a meeting at the congressman’s house one Sunday night. Hampton pushed for an exact date. Chanel said she couldn’t remember, but it had to be year before last.
“It was five or six of them sitting there in his living room. Vicki was right there with them,” Chanel said. “They were talking about the next governor’s race, and I heard them talking about who they could put up against Governor Martinez.”
“What did they say?”
“They hushed up when I walked in. I thought for sure Vicki recognized me, the way she kept looking. Ezra told them I was his housekeeper. I ain’t like it, but I went along with it so people wouldn’t get to talking about us. Anyway, they were trying to find somebody to run for governor, and Ezra told me they all but begged him to do it.”
“That would’ve been one helluva race.”
“He turned them down real quick. Ezra ain’t even need to think about it, not for one second. Told me he didn’t think no black man could win a statewide race like that, and really, no Democrat could after the last one left office.”
“He was probably right about that.”
“Probably, my ass,” Chanel said. “I’m being real with you. I don’t know nothing about no politics, but these folks ain’t gone let no black man in the governor’s mansion unless he’s coming through the back door. He said Vicki thought about it, though.”
“Running against Martinez?”
“Yeah, but Ezra talked her out of it.”
“What do you remember about Mr. Loudermilk?”
“Fat, white, and smelled like old money. His dusty ass used to call Ezra every othe
r day, looking for a favor. Ezra ain’t like him, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t neither. Ezra said he was an evil old bastard. Anyway, what they really wanted was to get some big transportation bill passed up in D.C.”
Hampton sat straight up in his chair and pressed the phone closer to his ear. “What do you know about that?”
“All I know is they waved a lot of money around until they got Ezra, Vicki, and a bunch of black state legislators on their side. Ezra said that without them, the president wouldn’t sign it. They wanted Ezra and Vicki to lobby Congress too. The deal was done, but Ezra ain’t wanna go through with it. He told them he wasn’t for sale and that they could have their money back.”
“How much did they pay him?”
“More money than he’d ever seen before.”
“As I understand it, he gave it back.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
Chanel went silent.
“I am going to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me.” After a long pause and no answer, Hampton took a breath and said, “Do you think they had Congressman Hawkins murdered?”
“Real talk, though, I never did believe the news about no lone wolf. Ezra used to say people could get strange over a piece of change, and we ain’t talking about no nickels and dimes. After he got that envelope at his house, he ain’t even wanna go to church that morning. He said he knew what it meant, and it had him fucked up in the head.”
“The bird?”
“Uh-hun.”
“Did he tell you what it meant or where it might’ve come from?”
“I like Miss Florence and all,” Chanel said, moving the subject. “She keeps putting holy oil on my forehead and says she’s blessing me. My edges can’t take all that.”
“I can’t say it helped my father either. Is he still drinking?”
“All day, every day,” Chanel said. “He ain’t bothering nobody, though. I can’t stay here long. I ain’t gone sit around and wait for somebody to put a bullet in my head. I paid too damn much for this weave,” she said with a nervous chuckle.
“Maybe you should cut it off,” Hampton said.
“Cut what?”
“The wig. Nobody would recognize Malik.”
“I ain’t doing that. This is who I am.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Hampton said. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“We straight,” she assured him. “It’s all good.”
“There’s something you’re not telling me. Where did the money go?”
Before he could utter the next word, she said, “I gotta go.”
Hampton stuffed the recorder into the backpack, leaned in to kiss Claire’s temple as she slept, and put his clothes back on. Here he was, in love again and chasing the biggest story of his life. And it felt like both were chasing him.
Paid for by Reclaim Atlanta.
Thanks to the fisticuffs at the debate, despite buckets of cash wheeled in by the League, Goodwin was out of the race now. Hampton was at the press conference down at his church. He’d watched as the preacher confessed his sins surrounded by a throng of his members and a smattering of community activists. His wife, Esther, stood next to him, clutching a Bible and weeping. All of his children, including an eighteen-month-old, apple-faced baby girl, were present. Goodwin explained his predicament, publicly asked for forgiveness. Hampton felt sorry for him. Even so, he did not let the opportunity to pose a direct question pass.
“What is the nature of your relationship with Virgil Loudermilk?” Hampton shouted from the back.
“I am proud to say that many of Atlanta’s business leaders invested in our campaign,” Goodwin responded. “We were honored to have their support.”
“Did he or any of his associates ask you to run for Congress? Were they running your campaign?”
“Jesus was in charge, then and now. Offering myself for public service, we believed, was the will of our God, and as Christians, we are bound by that.”
Hampton held back on asking more questions. He didn’t want to give his story angle away to his colleagues in the press scrum.
* * *
Claire was beginning to wake. Hampton went to her. She reached up and intuitively massaged the knot in his neck. He thought of Esther and how she’d cried that afternoon. He’d hurt Claire like that too.
“I love you,” he said. “Will you love me?”
“Forever and always,” Claire whispered. “We’re in this together.”
His phone was buzzing. The caller ID was Tucker’s cell number.
“It’s okay,” she said, looking away. “Answer it.”
“We’re rolling with it. Check your email for edits,” Tucker said. “Get me the updated copy, and we’ll post it within thirty minutes. Make it tight.”
“And legal?”
“It’s been cleared,” Tucker said. “How many installments in this series?”
“This thing is still writing itself.”
Hampton was all but certain now, especially after Dobbs walked in and blew the place up, that the corporate minders at Delacourte Enterprises had snuffed the first stories he pitched about Reclaim Atlanta and the League. Tucker was simply doing as he was told back then. But now the company was formally distancing itself from Loudermilk, McCaskill had quit, and Hampton had the leeway he so desperately craved.
“By the way, I sent you a link to a video the Dobbs campaign posted on YouTube. It’s a showstopper. Write a wrap, and I’ll get the digital team to embed it into your story.”
“What’s it about?”
“Reclaim Atlanta.”
Hampton knew the League funneled money into Goodwin’s now-defunct campaign, and he had the documentation on Reclaim Atlanta to prove it. There was more, but his hard drive had gone missing, and he was still re-creating the records.
Hampton’s latest piece revealed that Virgil Loudermilk was behind every dime. He had an anonymous source saying there was active coordination with the Goodwin campaign, a clear violation of federal law. According to another source, Loudermilk and J. T. King were spotted at the campaign office out on Piedmont Road and had spent several days prepping the minister for the Press Club debate and the Times-Register editorial board meeting. They’d written his speeches and recruited a campaign manager out of Florida, who turned out to be nothing more than a boy Friday, to run the outfit. It obviously hadn’t done a lick of good, since Goodwin hadn’t seen a good message he couldn’t trample.
The legal team pored over his copy to make sure nothing was in it that would get them sued. Hampton wasn’t so much worried about a lawsuit as he was about Chanel’s safety. And, if he was being honest with himself, he was worried about his own. The break-in at his house still haunted him. Hampton was beginning to think his hard drive hadn’t walked away by itself. They had come looking for something.
Nigga, we whatn’t supposed to kill no fuck-ass dog.
The newly installed burglar bars didn’t make him feel any better. He thought about asking Claire if he could stay with her for a while, but if Chanel was right, that wasn’t exactly the best idea. Being here in her house, even now, felt risky. Though Chanel’s latest revelations were confusing, Reclaim Atlanta was still in business and running the same playbook she described.
There was money in the wind. He figured Chanel knew exactly how much and where it was. Then too, somebody lost a shot at billions in transportation funds, thanks to Ezra Hawkins, and Hampton was convinced that somebody’s last name was Delacourte.
Chanel talked in circles and shut him down when he got too close. She was avoiding something, he knew. There was at least one more player Chanel would not name.
You don’t know what kinna people you messing with.
THIRTY-SIX
“I have loved this city every day of my life,” Victoria said, looking straight into the camera. “Together, we are building a better tomorrow for ourselves, for our children, and for the generations yet to
unfold. Come Election Day, I will need more than your votes. I need you to stand with me, shoulder to shoulder, as we work for change in our communities, in our city, and in our nation. That won’t be easy. There are people who don’t want to see that change, people who want to turn back the clock of progress.
“In the coming days, you will hear a lot more about a group that calls themselves Reclaim Atlanta. But don’t let them fool you. I know who they are, and they are not on our side. They are not on the side of smart growth, affordable housing, and equal pay. They are not on the side of equal access to affordable health care and eradicating poverty. They want to shred the social safety net, and they answer not to you, but to their Wall Street bankers. They are not on the side of criminal justice reform, safe streets, or making sure the American Dream is available to you and your children. They are not on the side of public education, for voting rights, for equal protection under the law. When an unarmed suspect is gunned down, they do not seek accountability and transparency. They do not weep for our sons and daughters.
“I believe there is a better way. When we fight, together we win. And I am asking you to believe.”
The video closed with a montage of Victoria Dobbs. Photos of her volunteering in a food bank, reading to a classroom of children, and addressing throngs of supporters flashed across the screen. “We are in this together, because we believe.”
She’d spent hours sweating over the draft script. Marsh joined Roy Huggins to help with the edits. And then she abruptly threw it away, rewriting every line until she was satisfied.
“You will always be a Dobbs,” she told herself. “Stay true to that.”
Do the next right thing.
The video had more than two hundred thousand unique views and counting now. Clips were played on the nightly newscasts.
“Win this clean,” Marsh said as they left the last television interview of the day. “Be the servant-leader you were called to be.”
“And if I can’t?” she said. “What if this is the final ride?”
Paper Gods Page 23
