When we arrive at City Hall, Gerard drives past a group of reporters camped outside who apparently knows his SUV because they run up to it with microphones in their hands, asking if the mayor’s a rapist. I look at Bobby. I can see the pain on his face. For an innocent man to hear shit like that? It has to hurt.
But we manage to get into the parking garage that City Hall security has off-limits to the press, as if Security was given a heads-up and was prepared for Bobby’s arrival. We pile out of the SUV and make our way over to a garage elevator that takes us to the top floor, and then around a corridor, and then into Bobby’s huge office.
While Bobby stands behind his desk and talk with his staff, including five more aides that were already in the office, I plop down on his couch. All of his staffers, who are all very young people, glance at me, some even disapprovingly, like I’m the last thing he needs right now: his slut, as they seem to see me, along for the ride.
One of them, that Kathy person who rode in the SUV with us, even has the nerve to come over to me and touch my arm. “Will you please wait downstairs in the lobby?” she asks me.
I look over at Bobby. His hands are full with his staffers, and with answering even more calls coming in. He doesn’t have time for this. I have to handle her myself. “No, thanks,” I say. “I’m good.”
My response surprises her because she jumps all defensive. “I’m not asking you,” she says to me. “I’m telling you. Wait downstairs.”
I’m like really surprised she’d go there with me. I don’t think I look like bully bait. But I know I have to keep it together. The last thing Bobby needs isn’t so much a slut going along for the ride, but an angry black woman on his hands. I lean back and fold my legs. If that doesn’t tell her how I feel about her order, nothing will.
I guess I have a certain look because she sucks her teeth and roll her eyes, but she backs the hell off. She leaves me alone and go back to arguing whatever point she’s arguing with the rest of the staff.
But when they start talking about that woman, and her motives, I can’t hold my peace any longer. I chime in. “I’d check the hospitals,” I say.
They all look at me like I’m crazy. Some look because what I said makes no sense to them. Others look because I have the nerve to say anything at all. Bobby looks too. He’s the only one I was talking to anyway.
“The hospitals? What do you mean?” he asks me.
“You said why did she have what seems like such a rushed press conference tonight.”
Bobby nods. “That’s right.” He’s still standing behind his desk. He has his suit coat open and his hands on his hips and is wearing one of those super-expensive looking suits he’s always wearing. His staff is surrounding him like he’s their general. But he seems truly interested in what I have to say.
“I say check the hospitals,” I say again.
“Why?” Kathy asks me. “What does hospitals have to do with what we’re discussing?”
“What are we checking the hospitals for?” Bobby asks me, ignoring her.
“This isn’t that big a town, and from what I’ve heard there’s only two hospitals in town. I’d check to see if anybody’s had a miscarriage around here.”
Kathy frowns like something’s smelling up the place. Namely, me. “A what? A miscarriage? Why?”
“Maybe that’s why she had to rush and get the word out that you impregnated her,” I say to Bobby. “Because she’s no longer pregnant.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” another one of the staffers say.
But Bobby’s not dismissing me so fast. He’s looking serious, and he’s looking at me. “You think she lost the baby?” he asks me.
“She could have. But she needed the fact that you’re the father on record first. Then, maybe as early as later tonight or tomorrow, she can claim she had a miscarriage and it’s your fault.”
“That I not only raped her,” Bobby says, “but that I distressed her so much that I killed her baby too.”
I’m nodding. “Right.”
“Shit!” Gerard says. What I’m saying is making sense to him too.
Now the other staffers, of flunkies, are on board too.
“But I doubt if she’ll use the local hospitals,” Bobby says. “Check surrounding towns,” he says to his staff. “Towns that don’t know my name and has no interest in Jericho politics.”
“Like Williston and Mayberry,” yet another staffer says.
“Like those towns,” Bobby says, agreeing with him.
“I’ll spearhead it, sir,” Kathy says, and gets on her cell phone as she moves away from the group.
“If what she’s saying is accurate,” Gerard says to Bobby, “you know what that means.”
Bobby’s nodding. “I know,” he says.
I don’t, but I don’t ask questions either.
“What made you think of something that underhanded?” the staff person who said my suggestion didn’t make sense asks me.
But I don’t have an answer for him. I have a lot of Street in me. They pull shit like that in the streets all the time. But I’m not telling him that.
Nearly an hour later, after everybody’s running around like crazy, with a team still calling every hospital they can and asking questions of all kinds of different people who work there, and while I’m getting sleepy again, Bobby’s sitting behind his desk still answering even more phone calls. I already called Ayden and told him I’d be later than I thought I would be. Much later, I tell him, from the looks of things. He tells me to enjoy myself and no need to rush home at all. Then he asks if Mr. Sinatra’s okay. I smile, and tell him he is. He apparently saw the news, too, and he’s not buying it either.
But then Bobby gets yet another call. But this time, after he hangs up, he gets up and starts putting on his suit coat. He’s telling Gerard he’ll be back, and asks for the keys to Gerard’s SUV. Then he walks over to me and reaches out his hand. “Let’s go,” he says.
“Where?” I ask, standing up, taking his hand. Home, I’m hoping he’ll say.
“My father just called. He wants me at his house, and he wants me there now.”
“Oh.” I want to ask him what does this mean for us? That our date is over and he’ll drop me off first? But as we walk toward the exit, he answers the question for me.
“And you’re going with me,” he says.
I look at him a little surprised. Does he realize what he’s doing? He’s taking me to what’s basically my boss’s house. She may not like that. Her husband, who owns the hotel I work for, may not like it either.
“Your stepmother is my boss,” I remind him.
He looks at me as we make our way around the corridor toward the elevators. “And?”
“And she may not appreciate having one of her desk clerks at her house on a late Friday night.”
Bobby smiles. “She’s not like that,” he says. And he isn’t even fazed.
But I can’t afford not to be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I can feel the tension all over Rain’s body as we enter my parents’ home. I tell her it’s okay, and keep my hand on the small of her back, but she’s still tense. She’s out of her element. I know that. But I also know, if she’s going to be with me, she’d better get used to it.
And as this night goes on, it’s looking more and more likely that being with me, in every sense of those words, is exactly where I want her to be.
To my shock, though, the whole family has gathered. Not just Jenay and Pop. But both of my adopted sisters, Ashley, who still lives at home, and Carly from Boston, are there. I didn’t even know Carly was in town. And Donnie’s there along with my older brother Tony, a psychologist and former seminary student. And even Brent and his wife Makayla are there. The smaller kids are in the playroom, and I know why. Pop didn’t call me here to offer his support. He called me here to grill my ass.
I introduce Rain to all of them, and all of them are nice and respectful of her, if not surprised that I brought her along. I c
an tell she’s surprised, too. She’s also surprised that my sisters are both African-American like her and Jenay, but I don’t go into any details. They’ll tell their story once they get to know her better. But Jenay, just as I told her, isn’t concerned by her presence at all.
“Welcome to our home, Renita,” she says to her with that warm smile we all love. “Have a seat!”
Rain seems to relax a whole lot more when Ma greets her that way and offers her a sit down. I sit beside her. Our family sit on the sofas around us. And the grilling begins.
Pop, as always, leads the charge. “It’s not true,” he says, “that goes without saying.” He’s sitting sandwiched between Jenay and Carly, and he’s leaning forward. “But how on earth are you going to handle it, son?”
“My team’s working on strategy as we speak.”
“Fuck strategy!” Pop yells. “A woman just got on TV and accused you of raping her, and impregnating her, and you’re working on strategy? What the fuck is wrong with you, Bobby?”
“What do you want me to do? Call her a liar? Beat her up? What, Pop?”
“Hold a press conference too! Shout from the rafters that that shit ain’t true and she’s lying her ass off! That’s what!”
That’s my old man. When they come for one of his, he goes hard.
I go hard, too, but I know the political world better than he does. And despite Laura’s allegations, I want to be reelected bad, and I’m too close to victory to give up now. I like my job. I’m not giving it up. They’ll have to pry this shit from my cold, dead hands, just like Charleston Heston said about his guns.
And that’s why I can’t go jumping out of the woodwork with both barrels blazing. At the end of the day, I need to make sure my thug past stays in the past, and I’m still clean enough to be electable.
“I got it under control, Pop,” I say to him.
“And who is this Laura Cox-Dixon or whoever she is anyway?” he asks me. “She said she dated you for over a year.”
“Off and on,” Carly says.
“I’ve never heard of her,” Pop says. “I’ve never even seen her with you, not once.”
“I didn’t bring her around the family,” I say.
“Yet you just met this one,” Ashley says, pointing her finger at Rain, “and you already got her up in Ma and Pop’s house.”
“You already got her around family,” Donald says, who’s always echoing Ashley. “What’s up with that?”
“There’s nothing up with that,” Jenay says. “Renita’s perfectly fine. That’s not the point your father was making at all.”
“Then what point is he making?” Ashley asks.
“He wants to know who is this Laura,” Carly, our Harvard-educated sister, says. “He wonders if she was as close to Robert as she claims.”
“It was off and on,” I say, “so no, we weren’t that close. But it was a relationship. An open relationship. And I definitely never raped her ass.”
Pop looks at Rain. I can already tell he’s hoping she’s the one. He wants me to find somebody worthy of the Sinatra name so badly. “Do you believe him?” he asks her.
To my relief, she doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir, I do,” she says.
“But you barely know him,” Ashley says.
“That’s true.”
“Then how can you believe somebody you barely know?” Donald asks. Again, he’s always echoing Ashley, and Ashley’s always echoing him.
“I think we all have a sense of people,” Rain says. “I can only go by what I sense.”
“And what are you sensing?” Tony asks. So far he and Brent have only been observing. Now he seems intrigued by Rain too.
“My sense,” Rain says, “is that he’s a decent man.”
“And you know this how?” Donald asks.
“Because she senses it,” Ashley says. “Duh!”
“Just answer my question, Renita,” Donald says like the boss he loves being. “What makes you so certain Bobby’s a decent guy?”
Since he’s technically her boss, she answers. “I haven’t seen any creep in him yet,” she says.
Pop burst out laughing. Tony and Ma do too.
“Not yet?” Pop asks.
Rain smiles at that. “Not yet,” she says.
But it doesn’t take long for Pop’s smile to leave, and he nods, like she just passed some test. “Good,” he says. “But what I’m trying to tell you, Robert,” he says to me, “is that I need you to fight fire with fire. I’m not telling you to break the law or do any stupid shit like that, but I am telling you to fight back, and fight back hard.”
“I am, Pop, don’t worry,” I respond to him. “I’ve got it under control. I’ll have this situation resolved in a day or so. A week tops.”
But I can tell he doesn’t believe me. He looks at Jenay, as if I’m not taking it seriously at all, and leans back. Had it been Brent, or Tony, or especially Carly saying they had it under control and they’ll have it resolved real soon, he’d believe them without hesitation. But me? Given my bad boy image and my past transgressions? He’ll believe it when he sees it.
“The thing is,” Jenay says, “the pressure’s already on Brent.”
I look at my big brother. “What kind of pressure?” I ask him. “I’m the mayor. You work for me. Who’s pressuring you?”
“Every person in power in this town,” Brent says. “I’ve gotten phone calls from half of the city council. I’ve gotten phone calls from most of the business leaders. They don’t want me to whitewash this. They want me to haul your ass in.”
Now I’m staring at Brent. And I have to admit, I’m a little shaken. If he arrests me, that’ll be all she wrote in Jericho. It’s a conservative town as it is. It’ll take me years to convince them of my innocence if I get arrested, and by my own brother no less, when the election is in a matter of months. “And what do you want to do?” I ask him.
“I want to tell them to kiss my ass,” Brent says, to my delight. But, like me, he likes his job too. “But I can’t do that.”
“What do you plan to do?” I ask him.
“My job. And it’ll never involve arresting an innocent man. I don’t care how badly they want it.”
I can tell he’s made the old man proud again. He, Carly, and Tony can just show up and do that. But he’s made me proud too. At least I don’t have that burden to bear.
And then my cell phone rings. When I look at the Caller ID and see that it’s Gerard, I answer quickly. Maybe he has news?
He does. And I’m smiling as he’s telling me. Everybody’s looking at me as I’m listening. And then I end the call.
“What did he say?” Rain is the first to ask me. It pleases me, I want her that at ease with me, but it pisses off Ash and Donnie. Who does she think she is, their looks seem to say.
“He said your theory was correct,” I say to Rain.
“What theory?” Pop asks me.
“Renita believes Laura had this rushed, Friday night press conference because she wasn’t pregnant anymore.”
“Not pregnant?” Ma asks. “She was never pregnant?”
“She was. But she’s not pregnant anymore. She had a miscarriage earlier today, just like Renita believed, in another town under her mother’s maiden name.”
“But she said she was pregnant at that press conference tonight,” Jenay says.
“Right,” I say.
“But why would she say that when it’s not true?” Pop asks me. “She didn’t have to mention that pregnancy. Wouldn’t the fact that she said you raped her enough?”
“No,” I say. “All these women in this town will knock down that story real fast. Including many women who are friends of hers. That shit’s not going to fly and she had to know it.”
“Then why did she say she was pregnant when she had a miscarriage earlier?” Brent asks, not getting it either.
“Because when I deny it, she’ll come back later tonight or tomorrow and claim my denial caused her to have a miscarriage.”
> “That you not only raped her,” Tony says, “but that you caused her to miscarry. That you killed her baby too.”
He gets it. Rain and me both are nodding. “Right,” I say.
“She’s just waiting for his denial,” Rain says.
“A denial that will never come,” I say.
“And you’ll give the media the info you have on her miscarriage,” Pop says.
“Right,” I say. “And if she’s lying about the fact that she’s pregnant when she knows she’s already miscarried, that will not sit well with the press.”
“Not just the press,” Jenay says. “It won’t go over well with the women in this town either. Who lies and say they’re still pregnant when their child, unfortunately, has died in the wound? What kind of sick individual would do that? And the fact that it’s a question means you win the argument,” she adds.
“And if he doesn’t,” Pop says, “then we’ll just have to call in reinforcements, namely your uncle, to make sure that he does.”
“Pop, I don’t want to hear that,” Brent says.
“And not in mixed company,” Donald says, looking at Rain.
Then Brent’s phone is ringing. Like the consummate professional he is, he moves away to answer. But it’s not a long conversation. He’s right back.
“Who was it?” Pop asks him.
“The president of the city council,” he says.
“What did he want?” Jenay asks, a worried look on her face.
“He wants me to arrest Bobby immediately. He believes the woman, he says.”
“What did you say?” Pop asks him.
Brent looks at him like it goes without saying. “I told him to go fuck himself,” he says. “What else?”
It feels like a bullet has been dodged if Brent’s down like that, and we all laugh. Including Rain. Maybe especially her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Bobby, you need to see this.”
It’s the Monday morning after that press conference. I just sent Ayden off to school (we’re in a carpool with other parents and this isn’t my week), and now I’m upstairs, in Bobby’s penthouse, lying across his bed while the tub in the master bathroom fills up with water. We plan to bathe together, get dressed together, and then take our asses to our separate places of employment separately.
Bobby Sinatra: In All the Wrong Places (The Rags to Romance Series Book 1) Page 19