Bad Girls Finish First

by Shelia Dansby Harvey

  Christopher’s comment about Dudley being clueless had set Dudley off. He was in the middle of a pretty decent-sized temper tantrum, so Dr. Laverne stopped trying to ask questions and simply listened. After going nonstop for forty-five minutes, Dudley wiped the sweat from his face with both hands and said, “Whew! That felt good.”

  “Did you get it all out?”

  “Think so. I know I say a lot of crazy stuff when I get wound up, but when it gets down to it, I probably wouldn’t kill anybody. Hell, I’ve never even shot a squirrel. Could you see me in prison with a bunch of ignorant niggers turned jailhouse faggots?” On Dudley’s list of things and people he hated, faggots were at the top with ignorant niggers running a close second. “I’d kill myself.”

  “Remember, Dudley, therapy is the place for honesty.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dudley said. It sounded like he was ready to go off again.

  “Uh, nothing.” Dr. Laverne cleared his throat. “Since you’re certain you’re not going to hurt anyone, have you done what we talked about last time?”

  “Gotten rid of my sawed-off? No, it’s in my campaign office and when Michael gets elected, it’s going to the governor’s office with me. There’re lots of crazies out there and half of them have a beef with the government. If anything ever goes down, I’m going out like a man, like a hunting man, sporting a sawed-off shotgun.”

  “The Capitol has top-notch security, Dudley. If anything happens there, the guards are better equipped to handle it than you are. You’re making excuses.” Dr. Laverne had a lot of patients who were violent, but it was Dudley, who’d never received so much as a speeding ticket, that Dr. Laverne was scared to cross.

  “Maybe I am making excuses,” Dudley said as he stood and put on his jacket. “But there’s something about having one close by. Hell, just the name, sawed-off shotgun, is undeniably big dicked.” Dudley snatched his prescription from Dr. Laverne’s desk and winked at him. “And so am I. All the women say so.”

  “Will you say something from your pulpit and get the other top preachers to do the same?” Michael asked David. They were in David’s sprawling suburban Dallas home, both nursing a glass of Glenlivet 1959 Limited Release.

  “Anything for you, Michael, but I’d like to hold a press conference first,” David replied.

  “Sure you would,” Michael said and smiled over the top of his uplifted glass at David. “I was thinking the same thing. How about tomorrow morning?”

  They sipped in silence until David asked, “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Michael hesitated. He felt slightly embarrassed, but the question had to be asked. “What about Grace? How’re you going to explain our divorce to your own congregation? She’s been with New Word since the day you married us.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem if you had kept showing up at Sunday service every now and then. Folks would have gotten over the split by now. Van Thomas over at Second Bethel changes wives every three years.” David snapped his fingers and laughed. “Think the women over there care? They’d stroke out if Van talked about leaving the pulpit. If you had only come back, passed out some hugs, kissed a few babies, they would have forgiven you too.”

  “I hear you, Doc. My heart’s still with New Word, but showing up there with Raven? First off, I’ve only been to church with her once, years back, and I love my baby, but she has no church etiquette whatsoever. And I don’t want her bumping into Grace. Raven’s high strung, easily upset.”

  David shrugged. “Don’t worry about what other people think about your divorce from Grace. There’s some stuff in First Corinthians that I can use, make it sound like it was Grace’s decision to get a divorce and that it’s biblically acceptable. Make her look good.”

  “I need you to do more than just make her look good. I need you to get Grace to come out for me.”

  David sat back and rubbed his chin. David had told Michael that he didn’t judge him for divorcing Grace, but privately he thought Michael’s decision was selfish and unnecessary. Also, David liked Grace, he couldn’t ask for a better church member. But no matter how much Grace supported David and the church, as between her and Michael, David’s allegiance was with Michael.

  “I might be able to convince her to support you, Michael, but I don’t recommend it. Grace is still a wreck. She acts strange, says strange things sometimes. Your best bet is that she goes nowhere near the press.”

  “She says strange things?” Michael felt a stab in his chest.

  “Uh huh. To couples, young ones mainly, if she thinks they’re in trouble. Tells them little lies about . . . cherishing each other, I guess you could say. A couple of parishioners have come to me, asked me to get her to stop. No big deal really.”

  “I didn’t know.” Michael blushed. “Should I do something, call her maybe?”

  “You? Do something for Grace?” David didn’t bother to conceal his disbelief. “Don’t get all concerned now—you weren’t when you left her.” Seeing the stricken look on Michael’s face, David added, “Don’t pay me any mind, I’ve been in a bad mood all day. Like I told you before, what happened between you and Grace is none of my business.” He continued to soothe Michael’s feelings. “Grace’s situation isn’t a big deal. All women go a little bit nuts when they get divorced. Grace’ll be all right, but for now she’s of no use,” David remarked as he freshened their drinks.

  “Yeah. Grace probably won’t even vote for me herself. But I do need the vote of every other black woman in this state. They’re gems, every one of them.” He eyed David. “I don’t know why you can’t find a sister to settle down with. You’re good at chasing them, or more precisely, letting them chase you, but sometimes you act like you don’t need sisters.” Michael sighed. “You just haven’t met the right woman. You need someone strong, a woman like Raven.” He sipped his drink, and between it and having shifted the talk from his personal life to David’s, Michael felt quite comfortable.

  “I need black women,” David said defensively. A thought came to him, about the kind of mate he craved, but it made him very uncomfortable and he quickly dismissed it from his mind. Trying to smile at Michael, David continued, “It’s a good thing for your campaign that I’m not ready to commit to just one woman because that means they’re all free to love me.” David shot his friend a confident look. “Whatever you need from the women in this state—votes, money—I’ll get.”

  4

  While David Capps worked on rebuilding Michael’s reputation with black women, Raven and Dudley tackled the money problem. The campaign had raised a few million, but not enough to counter Sweeney’s media blitz.

  “We’ve been to the same wells too many times,” Dudley advised Michael. “They’re coming up dry.”

  “Dry, my ass. All we’re getting is the little bit that spills out of Sweeney’s buckets,” Raven said as she flipped through television channels. It was commercial break time, and on station after station she encountered Jeff Sweeney—exchanging back slaps with longshoremen, hugging wrinkled little ladies, shaking hands with businesswomen; and of course there was the obligatory shot of Sweeney, surrounded by a miniature rainbow of humanity, jogging to nowhere.

  “By my count, for every commercial we run, Sweeney airs six. That money came from somewhere,” Raven said.

  “Looks like we’ve hit every interest group,” Michael said. “Business owners; Latino leaders; everyone’s locked down.”

  “What about the gun advocates?” Dudley asked.

  “What about them?” Michael’s voice was tight and the pleasant expression he always wore was nowhere in sight.

  “Texans have to have their guns, and they don’t mind shelling out money to hold on to the privilege,” Dudley said, ignoring Michael’s testiness.

  “Since when does anyone need a semiautomatic weapon?” Michael abruptly rose from his seat to refresh his drink.

  “Only since Congress passed the Second Amendment.” Dudley jumped up from his seat and grabbed
Michael’s glass. “Relax, I’ll get your drink,” he said obligingly.

  “Gun control is the only thing standing between us and the money we need to take the lead in the race,” Raven said. She was tired of going over the same ground with Michael. Though he was malleable in their personal lives, Raven had found out at the start of the gubernatorial campaign that her husband stood his ground when it came to his platform. Raven agreed with Michael: handguns and semiautomatic weapons served no purpose outside of law enforcement. Guns were crude, and there were so many more efficient, hard-to-detect weapons to choose from. Still, she wasn’t one to begrudge anyone his or her tool of choice. She’d support private citizens’ ownership of ballistic weapons if it would get her into the governor’s mansion.

  “I could place a call to STRAPPED,” Dudley said. “They’ve got so much money—”

  Michael’s look stopped Dudley in midsentence. “I don’t care if STRAPPED is handing out cash on street corners. Do you have any idea how many black people were killed by handguns last year?” Michael slammed his drink onto the table and left the room.

  “Why can’t he get it through his head that those STRAPPED crackers vote?” Dudley complained. “And when they do decide to kill a nigger they don’t shoot him, they drag him behind a Ram dualie or give him a lethal injection,” Dudley complained.

  “Crackers, niggers. You’re so articulate,” Raven said dryly.

  Dudley giggled.

  “When we started this race,” she said to Dudley without looking at him, “I promised myself that I would let Michael take the lead.” She turned the diamond bracelet on her wrist round and round as she spoke.

  “Let him take the lead in his own race. How big of you,” Dudley replied.

  “Not on everything, but issues involving ethics, definitely,” Raven said, ignoring Dudley’s sarcasm. She stopped playing with her bracelet and looked him in the eye. “When I want something, Dudley, I want it. Period. At times I’m not all that”—Raven paused, searching for the right word—“particular about how I get my way. What do you think about that?”

  “I think that in politics people who are too particular, who don’t realize that this is a business in which the ends often justify the means—those folks get left behind.” He got up to refresh his drink again, and with his back to Raven, added, “I don’t want Michael to be one of those folks.”

  “If Michael keeps on making irrational decisions based on emotion we’re going to be,” Raven said worriedly. She ran both hands through her luxurious mane, sighed, and then said, “Tell me about STRAPPED.”

  He nodded, glad that in Raven’s internal tug-of-war, her practical side won over her follow-the-rules side. “I thought you’d never ask. STRAPPED is a huge organization, but one person controls it. Erika Whittier. It’s time the two of you met.”

  Erika Chaseworth Whittier was a fourth-generation west Texan, progeny of the Chaseworth-Stilton family. Unlike many rich Texans, Erika’s family money didn’t come from the oil industry; it came from banking and assorted black-market enterprises that served oilmen. Erika was free, white, over twenty-one, and rich—in other words, accustomed to having her way.

  Erika had seen Raven on television and once or twice from a distance, so she knew that Raven was a good-looking woman. As Erika watched Raven make her way toward her table, she saw that in person Raven was more than just attractive—she moved like a dancer and looked like a model, only healthier.

  Erika herself was a very good-looking woman. She was a brunette who’d never given in to the hype that to be beautiful, one had to be blond. She was on the good side of 40, yet her hair had lost none of its thickness and luster. In high school Erika’s had been voted “prettiest smile.” Her father blamed it on the fact that every other girl in the class wore braces. But when braces came off the others, Erika still had the best teeth and lips in three counties. She’d been a cheerleader back when it was okay for cheerleaders to look athletic, and she maintained her body as easily as she maintained her love of west Texas, by hiking, river rafting, and biking.

  Although she was a Texas gal who could bring down a six-point buck with a clean shot, Erika hung with the jet set when she felt like it. She was a patron of the arts, owned a villa in the south of France, and was on a first-name basis with Donatella and Oprah. On the professional front, Erika headed the Austin office of a New York-based investment-banking firm.

  “It’s good to meet you,” Erika said as they shook hands. “I thought maybe I’d been stood up.”

  Raven never apologized to anyone but she made an exception in Erika’s case. “Oh, no. Thank you for agreeing to meet me. I’m so sorry that I’m a little late. Something came up that I needed to take care of. Our staff usually stays on top of things, but . . .” Raven gave a bemused smile. “Some days . . . whew!”

  “I’m sure it’s a good staff.”

  “I’d like to think so; I handpicked every member,” Raven said.

  “Well then, I guess we know who’s running things,” Erika said jovially.

  “I do what I can to help, but it’s my husband’s show,” Raven said, deciding there was no time like the present to start selling Erika on Michael’s qualities. “The senator’s a visionary, always looking at the big picture.” She shrugged, reached for her water glass, “I manage the details.”

  As they looked at their menus, Raven said, “I’ve never been here, but I sure like this menu.” She read a few en-trées aloud. “Pan-seared sirloin, braised pork chops, crab cakes with butter infused chipotle sauce. Sounds delicious.”

  “Sure does, for later. For lunch, I prefer lighter dishes, don’t you?” Erika asked.

  Raven put on a fake smile and nodded. When the waiter came they both ordered salads. Raven detested salad.

  As was her habit with every woman she came into contact with, Raven sized Erika up. She’s decent looking, Raven decided, especially for her age. Probably has had some work done. She studied Erika’s clothing and her jewelry and grudgingly admitted to herself that the woman had style. Erika had on simple, expensive diamond studs and a platinum and diamond ring, which she wore on her right hand. She shouldn’t wear such flashy jewelry; it shows a lack of class, Raven thought. Raven looked at Erika’s earrings only once, and wished that she’d worn her own diamond studs, which she judged to be slightly larger than Erika’s. Raven had to make herself stop sneaking glances at Erika’s ring. She noticed a Greek-lettered pinkie ring on Erika’s left hand.

  “Sorority girl?” Raven asked.

  “Yes, I was,” Erika looked down at her ring. “I know it’s silly to still wear this, but no matter how hectic things get, I can look at this ring and instantly feel calm. I still talk to two of my sorority sisters at least once a week, and no matter what’s going on we all get together twice a year.” She looked up at Raven and inquired, “You must be a sorority girl too. It usually takes one to recognize one.”

  “I am,” Raven said. She looked into the distance and hoped her eyes appeared to be alight with memories. “Thrown in with women you’ve never met, and you become friends for life. Incredible,” Raven said even though she hadn’t had a thing to do with her own line sisters since the day they went over.

  “Did you go to school here in Texas?” Raven asked.

  “No, I went to Wellesley, then to Wharton.”

  Raven shook her head. “It shows,” she said in a low conspiratorial tone. “I’ve only been in Texas a few years, and I love it here, but the culture is a little insular, don’t you think? It’s people like you, who’ve experienced how things are done in other parts of the country, who can help Texas reach its full potential.”

  “How so?” Erika asked. The slight smile on Erika’s lips made Raven think that maybe she was being laughed at, but she pressed on.

  Raven set her fork down. “By helping to open the eyes of all Texans so they can see beyond my husband’s color. I’m talking about whites, Latinos, and blacks. They’ve all got to come together, realize that the senato
r’s the best man for the job.”

  “And you think I can help with that?”

  “Erika, I know you can,” Raven said, her voice taking on the fervor of an evangelist. “You head the one organization that touches every demographic group in this state. The people here, whether they’re rich or poor, black or white, educated or not, are fiercely independent. They don’t like being told what to do, and they especially dislike being told they can’t own guns. If STRAPPED gets behind Michael, he’s sure to win.”

  Erika said, “The Committee to Save Texans’ Rifles And Pistols wants to support Michael, but he’s making it difficult. By the way, we don’t like that name. STRAPPED? It sounds too Wild West-ish, and it doesn’t fit our updated image.”

  Raven gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The good thing is you and I are on the same page: you want to support the senator, and I want you to do it. All we’ve got to do is figure out a way to make that happen.”

  Erika smirked. “I don’t see how I can help Michael’s platform. He hasn’t made a big deal of it so far, but I know he’s for gun control.”

  “I know it seems that way, Erika, but face it; in this election STRAP—your organization—is looking at the lesser of two evils. Can you imagine what will happen to gun rights if Jeff Sweeney is elected?”

  Erika knew what Raven meant. Michael’s opponent, Jeff Sweeney, had a defect that no gun-toting man or woman could ignore. He hadn’t touched a gun since, at age sixteen, he’d seen his father’s face blown off by an errant shot from a deer rifle. Sweeney believed in gun control, and couldn’t be persuaded to change his mind or mute his voice. Erika had already tried.

  Erika didn’t want Sweeney in office and having Michael as governor would be almost as bad, if it weren’t for Ted Ballentine. Ballentine won the Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor and now he and Michael, like it or not, were ticket mates. Michael didn’t like it. Having Ted Ballentine elected lieutenant governor mattered a great deal to Erika and her friends. Ballentine was ambivalent about guns, but he loved gun-lobby money. Once elected, Ballentine would do whatever he could to keep that money flowing into his bank account. Michael’s winning was a guaranteed means to that end.