“We’re early birds,” Shelly said absently, following Dutch. This was most unusual, and disrespectful too if you asked Shelly, but what was a man in his position to do? He couldn’t very well tell the president to sit down, to stop making himself at home, to stop being so monumentally rude.
“Beautiful home, Shell,” Dutch said as he continued to walk around. They were in the dining room now.
“Thank-you,” Shelly said. “We were fortunate to get it when we did. The markets were weak, it was a buyer’s market then, and we pounced. Now this home is worth five times what we paid for it. Or, at least, it was worth that. Now, in this economy, it’s more like three times what we bought it for.”
“You don’t say?” Dutch said, moving toward the kitchen.
“Yes, I do say,” Shelly finally said. “Now say here, Dutch, I don’t mean to be rude, old fellow, but what exactly is this about? It’s night time. I consider myself off the clock. I told you what I know.”
Dutch looked back at him. “Did you really, Shelly?”
“Yes! I told you Robert and Jed had concocted that ridiculous scheme. I had nothing to do with that. I, in fact, was questioning it all along. Ask them. They’ll tell you.”
Dutch looked up at the way the pots and pans hung from the rafters in the kitchen. Such an old-fashioned kitchen, he thought. “It’ll be a shame to lose all of this modesty, Shell,” he said.
Shelly frowned. “What do you mean?”
“This home. It’s so modest. So beautifully middle class. It’ll be a shame to lose it.”
“If you’re saying I’m a man of the people you’re right. I enjoy living as modestly as possible, to keep that common touch. That’s why we refused to stay at the mansion. But why would I be losing my common touch?”
“Not your common touch,” Dutch said. “I suspect you will gain more of that. The I feel your pain part of that common touch, if you get my meaning. No, I’m talking about this home itself. It would be a shame to lose your home.”
Shelly’s heart began to pound. He knew Dutch didn’t say words he didn’t mean. “Why would I lose my home?”
“Well that’s what happens, isn’t it, when the Feds get involved? They seize all property, all assets. All offshore bank accounts.”
Shelly stopped in his tracks. “What are you talking about? What bank accounts?”
Dutch smiled, began moving the refrigerator out of its slot against the wall. “Assets,” he said as he moved the big thing. “Like this refrigerator here.”
Shelly’s heart was now about to pound out of his chest. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Or like this wall back here,” Dutch said after his muscular frame had successfully removed the refrig. “Or, more specifically,” he added as he slung off a removable panel, “what’s inside this wall.”
Shelly’s heart fell through his shoe as he and, most importantly, Dutch, stared at stacks and stacks and stacks of cold, hard cash. All saran-wrapped in perfect conformity, all stuffed inside that carved out section of his kitchen wall.
Shelly staggered back until he was sitting at the kitchen table. Dutch, still in his baseball cap, jeans and jersey, stood there staring at him. Shelly suddenly looked as if he had aged twenty years in twenty seconds.
“Well, Shelly,” he said, so disgusted in the weakness of this man that he could hardly bear it. He had it all: power, position, his own family money. Why did he need to have this too? “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Shelly was already defeated. “It was a gift,” he said half-heartedly. “For when we retired.”
“Your daddy’s money wasn’t going to be enough?”
“It’s never enough,” Shelly said.
“Elected officials can’t accept gifts.”
“I know that”
“This is a federal crime.”
“I know that too.” Then Shelly looked at Dutch. “How long have you known?”
“Just after we were reelected, when you and Jed began scheming against my wife. I knew then I had better get me some insurance for the just in case days like this.”
Shelly began to hyperventilate. He was nuts to think they could have bested Dutch that easily.
He looked up to Dutch. “What can I do to savage this?” he asked, only he asked it, not as a powerful vice president, but as a child would ask a father.
Dutch stared at him, amazed that this broken man could have once been so fierce.
“You will resign to spend more time with your family or just because you’re tired of Washington, whatever reason you choose, I don’t care. Just as long as it’s innocuous and simple.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, 2 p.m. We will make the announcement in the Rose Garden.”
Shelly hesitated. “And I won’t go to jail?”
Dutch stared at him. “You will donate this money to charity.”
Shelly was alarmed. Did he realize how long it took him to amass this small fortune? “Charity?” he asked.
“That’s right. A charity that serves the needs of the poor people of Washington, DC.”
Black people in other words, Shelly thought. Why was he not surprised?
“And you will donate it, not in your name, but anonymously. One of my people will be here later tonight to arrange it.”
Dutch moved to leave just as a man Shelly didn’t know appeared. He frowned.
“Who is he?” he asked. And then looked at Dutch. “Who’s he?”
“He’s my insurance,” Dutch said. “He will not leave your side until you’re walking into the Rose Garden tomorrow afternoon, ready to make your announcement.”
“Well I’ve never,” Shelly said, regaining some fire. The level of disrespect! “What, you don’t trust me?”
Dutch looked at Shelly Pratt as if Shelly had just said the most singularly stupid thing he had ever heard spoken.
“No,” Dutch said, his voice laced with contempt, and left.
Agents of the Secret Service had already been dispatched to Robert Rand’s dockside estate, this one in the Holmby Hills of Los Angeles, California, a home in the same neighborhood as the Spelling mansion and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy estate. They informed Robert that the president was on his way and Robert, smiling coyly, had welcomed the news. Especially when the agent in charge stated that they were under strict orders to keep him in their sight.
And when the private helicopter landed on the private helipad in the front of his estate, he stood from the sofa where the agents had him seated and looked out of the window. It was two o’clock in the morning, but there was Dutch Harber, looking bedraggled in his baseball cap, jeans and jersey, walking across the lawn toward the main house. And Robert could hardly contain his glee. He was there to make a deal, Robert thought, there to ask for the negatives in exchange for his resignation.
Dutch entered the Rand home with a heaviness on his heart. This was taking its toll on him and he knew it. The idea that the government was being run by these power hungry thugs just disgusted him. And now he was forced to play by those same depraved rules they created, and that disgusted him more.
Robert had a smile on his face when Dutch walked into his home. A smile. As if what he did to Gina was just politics, just a part of the game. A chill ran down Dutch’s spine when he saw that smile on Robert’s face.
“Welcome to my home, Mr. President,” Robert said. “My other home, that is. You’ve been to my estate on the Virgin Islands. But this is where I spend most of my time.”
Dutch just stood there, allowed Robert to carry on.
“When they informed me that you were coming, I wasn’t the least surprised. I knew you would want the details and I am more than happy to give them to you. It was something that neither one of us wanted to happen, but it did anyway. I apologize, I’m man enough to own up to what I’ve done, and I know you’re man enough to know that I didn’t do it alone. I’m to blame, but so is your wife.”
Dutch’s jaw tightened. But he maintained
his cool. “What are the details?” he asked.
Robert hesitated only slightly. He thought he saw a whiff of something in Dutch’s eyes, something akin to hate or rage, but it quickly passed. “I told her she could go to the dinner and I would alert her when Governor Feingold arrived. She, however, decided to come up to my hotel room. Which was fine, she’s an adorable person and I enjoy her company. But we started drinking and talking and there was still no sign of the governor, so one thing led to another thing and the next thing you know we had gone too far.”
“Complete with cameras on the ready,” Dutch said.
Robert smiled. “No, that was my idea.”
“Insurance?”
Robert laughed this time. “Right. Insurance.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got some insurance for you, too,” Dutch said and then he looked at the agent in charge.
“Down that hall, sir, to your right,” the agent said.
Dutch began heading that way. “Come with me,” he said to Robert.
“That’s a bedroom,” Robert said, confused. “I have an office over here where I thought we could discuss this privately,” he said, pointing to a study just off from where they stood. But Dutch kept walking.
Robert reluctantly followed Dutch, although everything within him was telling him not to go.
He should have listened.
As soon as Dutch and Robert entered the bedroom, the door was closed. Dutch then removed his jersey, revealing his bare, incredibly hard abs and chest.
“What are you doing?” Robert asked, a puzzled look on his face. He thought they were going to discuss the turning over of the negatives in exchange for his resignation. “Why are you taking off your shirt?”
“I don’t want to get it bloody,” Dutch said truthfully. “Where are the negatives?”
“Bloody?” Robert asked, confused. And then he smiled. “Whatever do you mean?” he asked.
“Where are the negatives?”
“You don’t expect me to just have them with me, do you?”
“No, actually I didn’t. It doesn’t matter anyway. You won’t be using them.”
“Oh, really now? And why’s that?”
Dutch walked up to Robert. He had been holding in his anger, holding in his rage, for just this moment. “Robert,” he said to his former friend, “you raped my wife.”
“I. . . what? Is that what she told you?”
“You took a date rape drug that you purchased from some Hong Kong doctor, slipped it into her drink, and savagely raped her. Then you had the nerve to take pictures. And you, somehow, thought that I was going to let you rape my wife, let you take pictures of my wife being raped, and because of the shame of it I would resign my presidency, turn the reins of power over to you and Jed and Shelly, and just fade away into the sunset? Do I have it about right? Was that the great plan you and Jed concocted?”
Robert studied Dutch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with a sincerity that made Dutch angrier. The nerve of these people, he thought. Who the hell do they think they are?
“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Dutch asked.
“No. Hell no! I know you’re disappointed in your wife, maybe even a little in me, but it is what it is, Dutch, and it’s no great scheme. It’s me and your wife having a nice, quiet fuck.”
And that word alone broke it for Dutch. He took his fist and cold-cocked Robert, knocking him to his knees with one blow. But knocking him down wasn’t the point to Dutch. He wanted to knock him out. He wanted to decimate him physically the way he tried to decimate Gina sexually.
He grabbed Robert by the catch of his collar, slung him against the bedroom wall, and the fight was on. Robert attempted to fight back, getting in some good licks of his own, but he could not out-scrap Dutch. Dutch had him on the ground, pounding his fist into his face, over and over and he still kept pounding him. Even as the blood began to come, even as Robert’s eye was already swelling shut, he kept plummeting him. His fist was in agony from the way he kept beating the life out of Robert Rand. He would not stop, in fact, until Robert managed to cry out, “you’re killing me!” in such an anguished voice that Dutch finally looked at his handiwork, at the blood and the swelling, and the fear, and stood up.
It was wrong, it was animalistic, it was even criminal, Dutch knew. But that didn’t make it any less necessary.
Breathing so heavily he could barely stand up, Dutch then opened the door. The Cameraman came in, followed by two additional big, strongmen, and they closed the door.
“He’s all yours, ladies,” Dutch said as he backed away until his back was against the opposite side wall.
The Cameraman didn’t start clicking, however, until the men turned Robert Rand over, removed his pants and his briefs, and took him for a long, painful ride. Robert screamed out in agony, screamed with an excruciating scream, but Dutch didn’t so much as flinch. He watched.
When the men finished, and the pictures were taken, and the blood was now spewing from Robert’s face and ass, Dutch walked up to him. He was, by now, crying like a baby.
“Not a marvelous feeling being violated, is it?” Dutch said lightly. Then he turned serious as a heart attack. “Release those derogatory pictures of my wife anywhere in this world, and I’ll be releasing yours. And I want you to just try and run for president with pictures like these floating around. See how far you can go then in your quest for absolute power. They wouldn’t elect you dog catcher. So take your money and shove it up your ass. That is, when it heals.” Then Dutch stood erect. “Do we understand each other, Mr. Rand?” he asked.
Robert’s pain felt as if he had been shot, stabbed and then strangled. “Yes,” he said, but just barely.
And Dutch left the Rand estate. He left it with that same heavy heart he had arrived with. He leaned his head back as the helicopter moved up then down, buckled, and then smoothly flew away. Everything he did to them tonight, he knew they deserved. But that wasn’t the issue. He had no problem whatsoever with what he did. It was the aftereffects that bothered him. Because every time he was forced to utilize such unsavory methods to kill the cancer threatening to destroy the people he loved, a part of himself, a significant part, always died too.
It was a little after eight a.m. when he arrived back at the White House. He entered the bedroom, took a quick but needful shower, and crawled into bed behind his sleeping wife. It wasn’t until she felt the troubling of the bedsprings did Gina even open her eyes. By the time she fully registered that it was Dutch just coming to bed, he had already moved in behind her, lifted her gown, and pressed his naked body against her now naked backside.
“You’re back,” she said, still mostly asleep.
“Yes,” Dutch said, hoping to get a few hours of sleep himself. “I’m back.”
“Little Walt missed you at dinner last night.”
Dutch smiled. “I know. I peeped in at him before I showered.”
“He’s still sleep?”
“Yup. He’s picking up mommy’s habits of sleeping to ten every morning.”
Gina smiled weakly. “Not every morning.”
The thought of Gina against him, and her sweet scent after all of the ugliness he had to endure all night long it seemed, began to make him heady. “I miss you,” he said heartfelt.
“I miss you, too,” Gina said, her backside snuggling closer against his front.
“Where did you go?”
“Here and there,” Dutch said. He began rubbing his penis against her ass. He needed to feel that normalcy of Gina’s comfort again.
“Here and there?” she said. “What does that mean? Here and there. And everywhere?”
Dutch slipped his penis between her legs. “Yes,” he said. “Everywhere.”
When Gina felt his penis against her, she moaned. “Aren’t you too tired for that?”
“Too tired to fuck you?” Dutch asked, slipping his penis into the entry of her vagina, prepping her. “That day will never come.”
“You’ll never know how glad I am,” he said.
“Dutch?”
“Yes?”
“Do I have to worry about those photographs anymore?”
Dutch closed his eyes. Opened them again. “No,” he said firmly.
“Forever?”
“Forever,” he said and he could prep no longer. He slid his penis inside of her, sighing as the feel of her folds clenched around him.
Gina smiled and sighed too. “I knew you’d take care of me,” she said. And he smiled too. He wasn’t at all sure if she meant the photos, or what he was doing to her right now.
But as peaceful as their morning began, by noon it was a raucous day. It all stared right at noon with the announced resignation of Jed Brightman, Speaker of the House of Representatives, an announcement that rocked the Capitol. Speculation ran wild, with almost all of it focusing on the Speaker’s well known penchant for the ladies. His wife finally had had enough, was the conventional wisdom, and planned to expose him if he didn’t step down. Or maybe there was some female blackmailing him, was the nonconventional wisdom. He denied both, and spent all afternoon spinning that denial, but it didn’t matter in the end. He was out as Speaker, out of Congress, and they all waited for the next big news.
That next big news came at 2pm in the Rose Garden. Gina, LaLa, and Christian were assembled in the Roosevelt Room watching the news on television. Gina hadn’t seen Dutch after he had made love to her and fell asleep, and she had gotten up, showered, and went to begin her scheduled meetings. Until just a few minutes ago, when Allison Shearer informed her that the vice president was about to make an announcement and the president would be with him.
After the Speaker’s abrupt announcement, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what Shelly was about to do. Dutch had been gone all night, and Gina was certain that his rendezvous had everything to do with the Speaker’s resignation, and now with Shelly’s sudden need to make an announcement himself.
“I’ll be very brief,” Shelly began, and Gina and LaLa were glued to the screen. Crader was on his cell phone handling some business with the deputy chief of staff, but was only mildly distracted. Christian was watching too, but he was mainly texting Jade. They were becoming quite close, like kids really, and Gina was pleased because Dutch was pleased, although Jade still had a lot to learn. But at least they were trying, she felt.
Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love Page 18