Patricia admired Kim. She admired her spunk because it was very effective.
Kim was there when Edwin’s father was the pastor. And she was there when Edwin took over. She witnessed all of the fasting and praying that went on among a lot of the women in the congregation who were praying to God that Edwin would choose them to be their wife.
Kim was also there when Edwin sifted the wheat from the chaff and found Patricia. She witnessed the shock and envy when the pastor introduced Patricia as his fiancée.
And when some started whispering “She’s an outsider. She’s not even a member. How could he?”
Kim would shoot back, “I didn’t know that there could be any outsiders within the body of Christ. I wonder what Jesus would think about that?” And the chatter quickly ceased.
Kim had Patricia’s back before Patricia even knew that there was a Kim. So it was natural that they would become friends. They had a lot in common—handsome, God-fearing husbands. Both had young children and felt that they had no time for themselves. After their last choir rehearsal, Kim decided in Kim fashion to make a stand. She decided that she had enough of the ripping and running and doing for everyone else.
“Patty, girl, we are going to a spa!” Kim announced.
“A what?!” Patricia said.
“A spa,” she said. “You know, facials, massages, green tea, that music that sounds like running water, the whole nine. I am getting a babysitter for the kids and we are going for the entire day to be pampered.”
“But—”
“But nothing!” Kim said. “I’ll not hear anything from you but ‘What time do we leave’!”
Kim called Patricia the day before their spa date to make sure she hadn’t chickened out. Patricia was getting little Edwin ready for preschool.
“Girl, I just wanted to confirm that we are on,” Kim said. “Not that you have a choice or anything!”
Patricia grinned. “Yes, we’re on. Okay!”
Patricia was thinking how she might slowly be able to build a social life for herself again that included life outside friends since college, and somehow she had drifted away from all of them. She had no one but herself to blame because she loved her family so much. But she was starting to feel empty and needed to balance her life. Edwin was a great husband and a good friend, but he had so much weight on him with the church and he was constantly busy.
“Don’t forget, you have to be here by ten-thirty,” Kim said. “Our treatments begin at eleven. I figured after the spa we could go shopping and then have a nice meal.”
“I can’t wait!”
Dieci in Linnoston, New Jersey, was one of the best full-service spas in the tristate area. It even had a sauna, a gym, and a swimming pool for those who wanted to exercise. Kim and Patricia didn’t want to do any work. They wanted to be served during their experience, and they got the works.
It was the most relaxation Patricia had experienced since her honeymoon in Bermuda. She missed the pampering. She even got a pedicure—something she hadn’t bothered to do in years.
“Edwin’s going to love that shade of pink,” Kim said.
Patricia smiled just thinking about it. She loved the attention Edwin gave her, and she wanted to make him happy. This would be a nice treat for him, too.
After the spa they headed across the highway to The Mall at Short Hills. Patricia only went shopping for kids’ clothes and kids’ accessories and shirts and ties for Edwin. She loved shopping for them.
“Girl, you desperately need a pair of jeans,” Kim said. “Just because you’re a pastor’s wife doesn’t mean you need to look like it all of the time!”
They shared a chuckle and headed to the Gap. Kim had just turned thirty. Patricia, who was thirty-two, was dressing like she was much older.
“A pair of Gap jeans will give you some of your sass back,” Kim said. “But let’s stay out of the low-rider section, okay? I don’t think Edwin would appreciate that! And neither would God!”
After shopping, the two headed over to Café Arugula’s, an upscale Italian restaurant on South Orange Avenue in South Orange. On the drive there, Kim turned on the radio. She normally played a gospel CD, a compilation featuring her favorite, Vanessa Bell Armstrong. But the radio came on. It was preset to 99.9, WHOT.
Every now and then Kim liked to listen to Ritz Harper, even though she would usually have to pray about it later and repent.
“Okay, everybody, we have in the studio with us today Ivan Richardson,” Ritz cooed. “He’s a very handsome man about six foot even. Chocolately skin that is as smooth . . . Ooh, let me feel that . . . yep, as smooth as a baby’s ass. What kind of products do you use?”
“Kiehls,” Ivan said.
“Okay. Welcome, Ivan, to the show,” Ritz said. “Okay, so . . . do you consider yourself a gay man? Or are you like J. L. King, ‘on the down low’? Whatever that means.”
“I hate labels,” Ivan said. “I don’t label myself. I just prefer an attractive man’s company. And it’s not all physical for me; there has to be something more.”
“Uh-huh,” Ritz said, nodding in agreement. “So, Ivan, I understand that a while back you had something more and that something more left you in a lurch—without so much as a good-bye.”
“Well, Ritz, it’s deeper than that. I met him by chance and it was love at first sight, at least it was for me. He was so gentle and kind. I had never met a person like him. He had a strength about him, a power that was intoxicating. He told me that I was his first—his very first.
“It was whirlwind. We shared a lot over the period of time we spent together, and during that time we spent every waking moment together. Ritz, it was the best time I have ever had in my life. I thought that even if we didn’t continue our relationship, we would be friends for life. I mean, he shared things with me that I know he never shared with anyone else.”
“So what happened?” Ritz said, leaning forward as if to grab the words right from his mouth. Then she shot a look at Aaron to let him know to get ready with the appropriate sound effects. She always had her show working like a well-directed Broadway play.
“That’s a good question. I’m still trying to figure that out. I’d gone out for a meeting with some clients for most of the afternoon. We had plans that evening to check out a new restaurant that had just opened downtown. We were going to celebrate our eighth-month anniversary—yes, I know it was corny, but we were getting down like that. I had even bought us a two-seater scooter to tool around on as a surprise for our anniversary. We had rented one that we’d had a blast on.
“I got home around four in the afternoon and the place was empty. His clothes were gone, all of his toiletries, all traces of him. Gone. Not a note, nothing. And what was so hurtful, Ritz, was that I had no way of tracking him down. It was strange. You can share so much with someone, get so deep with them, fall so hard, and not really know much about them. I knew he was from New York, but I never thought about getting a number for him there. Why would I? I never imagined he would just pick up and leave.”
“So why not call information?” Ritz said. “Why not go on the Internet and track him down? You had a name, right?”
“Yes, I had a name,” Ivan said, getting a little choked up just thinking about it. It was an old wound that was cracking open, feeling like it all just happened yesterday even though it had been nearly seven years. “I am a proud man, Ritz. My mama and grandmama raised me to bow to no man, to not show weakness. I wasn’t running after anyone like some lovesick puppy. He disrespected me and he ripped my heart from my chest. I was not giving him the satisfaction of having me stalk him. That just isn’t me.”
“But you had a name,” Ritz said. “You could have called just to tell him off and let him know how you felt.”
“I was not going to give him the satisfaction. Besides, there was a part of me that absolutely loved him and didn’t want to disrupt his world. I mean, he is a minister.”
Kim and Patricia were talking while the radio was on.
But when the man spoke the word “minister,” they both perked up.
“A minister?!” Ritz pretended to act surprised.
“Yes.”
Kim couldn’t believe it. “I am so tired of these false prophets infiltrating our churches,” she exclaimed. “Folks are showing up to church and they have no idea who’s really standing in their pulpit. ‘Devil’s henchmen’ is what I call them.”
“Girl!” was all Patricia could muster.
Ritz Harper was reeling Ivan in for the final round.
“Is this minister someone we would all know?” Ritz said, baiting Ivan.
“Yes. Now, I’m not here to out him. But I feel that people should know the kind of man who is leading a tremendous amount of people. I believe he is a good man, but he is a liar. He’s lying to his family and I believe that he is lying to himself. And what is it that they say, Ritz? The truth will . . . what?”
“Set you free!” Ritz said, finishing the statement. “So who is this mystery minister?
“What prompted me to come here today was seeing how happy he looked. But underneath the smile I saw on his face, I know that he was happier with me. I want to rescue him from this lie of a life that he’s leading. I want him to come face-to-face with what I know, and that is that he’s really a gay man. I want Pastor Edwin Lakes to be set free.”
Kim almost ran off the road. She immediately looked at Patricia, who looked like she had been hit in the face with a ten-pound bag of flour. The color had completely drained from her face and she looked beaten.
“Wha-at?” Patricia screeched.
Ritz let the silence linger, milking the moment for all she could. The studio was wild with shocked awe and gasps. Then Aaron hit a button and played the “I’m gay, I’m a homo, I like guys!” sound effect.
“Pastor Edwin Lakes,” Ritz repeated the name. “That’s the minister who recently was featured on the cover of Ebony. He has one of the largest churches in Harlem. That Pastor Edwin Lakes?”
“Yes, that Pastor Edwin Lakes!”
Patricia was instantly nauseous.
“Kim, take me home, please,” Patricia said in almost a whisper.
“Of course” was all Kim said for the rest of the ride. It was one of the few times in her entire life that Kimberly Atkins was at a loss for words.
22
Ivan left the studio and walked down Park Avenue in hopes of catching a cab back to his hotel. But before he realized it, he had walked fifteen blocks and decided to just keep walking. He had to clear his head, which was full of so much conflict and confusion.
He thought he would feel better releasing seven years of bitterness and anger. He thought he would feel free letting Edwin have it for making him feel so cheap and so small. Revenge wasn’t sweet for Ivan; it churned in his stomach like broken glass.
“What am I doing?” he thought to himself. It was a question he wished he had asked before he’d gone on the radio and completely ruined Edwin’s life. “What have I done?”
That answer was clear. Ivan did something he thought he wasn’t capable of doing—he had acted out of cowardice. Instead of being a man and facing Edwin, asking him what happened or, even better, moving on with his life, Ivan took the coward’s way out: He broadsided him.
“I knew how to reach him,” Ivan started muttering to himself. “I could have just called him. I’m sure he had a good reason for what he did.
“Yeah, but he should have called me or written me. He didn’t have to leave me out there hanging like that. Who did he think he was?”
This battle went back and forth inside of Ivan’s head as he aimlessly walked the streets of New York.
23
Derek hated the long ride upstate. But he made the trip religiously once a month. He didn’t have to ride the bus, but he wanted to feel some of the pain his brother must be feeling, locked away like an animal. He felt grimy being on that yellow school bus, riding through those backwoods with all of the depressed family members—mostly mothers, a few girlfriends, a wife or two, and a handful of kids—of men who were locked away, some (like his brother) who would be there for a very long time.
Derek was practically the only male besides the bus driver on the trip. He was also one of the few who seemed to have a little money in his pockets. It was all very disheartening. But it was a necessary evil. Derek was a man of his word. When his brother got locked up—sentenced to fifteen years to life on a racketeering conviction—he vowed that he would take care of him. Derek kept Jayrod’s commissary account well stocked and gladly received the collect calls Jayrod made every week.
Family loyalty was something instilled in the Mentor brothers from an early age by their mother. She wasn’t much of a mother to them in many ways, but she beat one thought into them that stuck: “Family is all you got, you two are all you got. So when the world crumbles in on you, hold on to each other.”
Their mother had died ten years ago, when Jayrod was twenty and Derek was seventeen. She was found in a crack den with a needle in her arm, overdosed on heroin. Jayrod became the father and mother, provider and caretaker—a role he had been playing long before their mother actually died. Jay hit the streets hard and made sure that neither he nor Derek wanted for anything. He kept Derek out of trouble because “You are the good one,” he told his brother. “You are going to college, and you’re going to be a lawyer. I’m damn sure going to need a good one sooner or later.”
Unfortunately, sooner came a lot sooner than any of them expected. Before Derek could make it out of college, Jayrod was locked up.
It was Ritz Harper who put the heat on Jayrod. She was constantly talking about how the rap game had been infiltrated by the drug game and how so many of these rap labels were headed by drug lords and king pins. Killer Inc., which featured platinum-selling Da Ruler and R&B sensation Empathy, was started by an associate of Jayrod’s who ran one of the largest drug rings in the Bronx. After Gato went “legit” in music, he used Jayrod as a supplier. Ritz Harper was fascinated by the connections. When artists came by the studio, she got them to admit that they had a steady person supplying them with their weed. Under the guise of trying to find a supplier for herself whom she could trust, she got some artists to give up a name. Once Ritz had a name, she ran with it.
“It must nice to be the elite supplier to the stars,” Ritz said on the air. “That Jayrod Mentor must have a nice business for himself. Because one of his boys, Mr. Bones, couldn’t even sit through a twenty-minute interview in this studio without lighting up twice . . . cough, cough!”
The feds tuned in to the Ritz Harper Excursion for information as well as entertainment. And they started watching Jayrod. He started feeling the heat and had to be extremely careful. But you can’t be careful enough when the feds are on your trail. And thanks to the Patriot Act, where there were no limits on what the government can spy on, they would get you for something.
Like Al Capone and Tommy Mickens and so many others before him—Jayrod Mentor didn’t get caught for the obvious. He was caught for tax evasion and racketeering.
At the prison, Derek stood in line and waited his turn to go through the solid metal doors where he had to endure a search by a stoic, stone-faced guard. Derek then had to empty the contents of his pockets, which were placed in a large manila envelope and locked in a locker. He was told he would get his belongings back upon leaving the prison. Derek felt a little more humiliated, and he didn’t like it. He knew his strong-willed brother was going crazy. Jayrod’s only saving grace was that he had lots of friends inside. In jail, he was a bit of a celebrity and was well taken care of for someone who was stripped of everything, including the ability to decide when to wake up and when to go to sleep.
Derek was led into a room divided in two by a piece of Plexiglas that reached the ceiling. Jayrod sat on one side in a prison-issue orange jumpsuit. Derek sat in the hardback chair on the other side and picked up the phone.
“Yo, thanks for that last deposit,” Jayrod said. “It came in h
andy. How’s the business?”
“It’s going well,” Derek said.
“You staying out of sight, because you know they would love nothing better than to have you in this place, too.”
“I know. I’m being very careful.”
“I know you are. You were raised right,” Jayrod said with a wink. “Listen, I talked to my lawyer and they are filing an appeal. It’s going to cost us a mint. Can you cover it?”
“Sure.”
“That’s my baby brother! Okay. Good. I’m going crazy in here, D. I know I can’t do no fifteen years in this place. That bitch Ritz Harper has to pay. This is her fault. The big-mouth bitch. I have everything set up, D. It’s all in place. I just need you to oversee it and make the payoffs. Can I count on you?”
“You don’t even have to ask,” Derek said. “Of course you can count on me.”
“I couldn’t believe our good luck. I mean, what are the odds of you banging the intern who works right under that bitch. How lucky could we get? You now have access to her every move. This is perfect. So again, my boys are ready. Everything is in place. All you have to do is make the call and give them the place and then make sure they get hit off when the deed is done. If this appeal doesn’t go through, at least I can be in here with a smile on my face. I love you, baby brother.”
“I love you, too, Jay.”
Derek hung up the phone, collected his stuff, and rode the bus back to Penn Station. Drugs were one thing. But murder? And what about Jamie? Derek had feelings for her. But he also had a strange attraction to Ritz. He would have to end it with Jamie. He would have to do it today.
24
It was less than twenty-four hours since Ritz Harper and Ivan Richardson had tossed away a lifetime of dreams, a lifetime of service. In one hour, everything that Edwin’s parents had hoped for, for him and their church, was fading away. He was on the verge of losing everything—his wife, his church, perhaps even his faith.
Drama Is Her Middle Name Page 13