Bad Blood (28 page)

Chapter 54

Rachel

I
WISH
I
COULD HAVE TAKEN A PICTURE OF THE LOOK ON
S
ETH'S
face back at that restaurant. I would have framed it. Once I got back to my car, I sat there and laughed for five minutes. I couldn't imagine what that Sadie woman said to him after I left. She looked like a smart woman to me, and I hoped she was smart enough to take my advice.

I got back to my office an hour later than usual, but nobody noticed. I was in such a frisky mood, I went shopping after work. Because of the weight I had lost since Seth's departure, I had purchased a lot of new clothes in a smaller size. I didn't go out as much as I used to, so some of my new outfits were still hanging in my closet, with the price tags attached. Instead of buying more new clothes this time, I decided to get a few new things for my apartment.

After purchasing some new draperies, a new Crock-Pot, and new bed linens, I decided to treat myself to a kick-back dinner at Dino's. I rarely went out to dinner alone, but I was not in the mood to deal with any of my friends. I felt like being alone today.

After my light spaghetti dinner and two glasses of wine, I went home. I had messages from Mama and Patrice. Mama, as usual, was calling to see how I was and to tell me the same mundane things about funerals and everything else going on back home.

Patrice told me in her message that she had picked up some barbecue sauce available only in Georgia that I had asked her to purchase for me during her stopover in Atlanta. She said she'd deliver it in a couple of hours.

I had no desire to talk to my mother, and since Patrice was coming over, I didn't call her back, either. I decided to call up Uncle Albert. I hadn't spoken to him in a few days, and I liked to keep him in the loop about what I was up to.

It was Kingston who answered the telephone. “Hello, Rachel. Al and I had begun to worry about you. We haven't seen you in a while, and you haven't called. Are you all right, honey?”

“I'm doing just fine, Kingston. Is my uncle home?”

“Yes, he is. But before I hand the phone to him, tell me what you've been up to lately.”

“I confronted Seth today,” I said proudly.

“You did what?” Kingston hollered.

“I told him what I thought about him.”

“Did you do it over the phone, or did you corner him somewhere?”

“I got in his face in a restaurant while he was having lunch with a potential client.”

“How did he take it?”

Right after I told Kingston everything that had transpired, he put Uncle Albert on the telephone.

“Girl, what did you say to Seth?” Uncle Albert asked in a loud, high-pitched voice. “I hope you didn't do anything crazy enough for him to sic the cops on you.”

“I didn't. I just told that punk what I thought of him, and I told that woman he was with what a crook and a con man he is. And I told her the real reason he broke off our engagement. I don't think she'll be doing business with him anytime soon.”

“My goodness! Baby, I know you're still angry with him, and I don't blame you one bit. But what you did today was a bold thing for you to do. Don't you think that was a little too harsh?”

“Whose side are you on?”

“You know I'm in your corner, sweetie. I just don't want you to do something that you'll regret someday.”

“The only thing I'll ever regret is getting involved with Seth Garrett. I wasn't going to rest until I'd given him a piece of my mind!”

“It sounds like you gave him several pieces of your mind today. Oh well. He did ask for it, I guess. Straight men are such idiots! You would think that a man Seth's age would know how to treat a woman by now. Maybe he'll think twice before he hurts another woman the way he hurt you. Why don't you come by the pad so Kingston can roll you a joint? I'm sure you could probably use one. His brother in Hawaii sent us some of that Maui Wowie weed.”

“You know I've never done drugs, and I don't plan on starting now,” I said with a heavy sigh.

“Weed is not drugs, baby girl.” Uncle Albert laughed. “Well, come over and have a drink with us. I'll cook you some collard greens, some corn bread, and deep-fried pork chops. Hold on a second. Kingston is saying something.” Uncle Albert mumbled something to his boyfriend, and when he came back on the line, he told me, “Kingston asked if you changed your mind about arranging for Seth to get a good ass whupping? It could be done tonight.”

“That's tempting, but I'll have to take a rain check. I'm tired, so I just want to relax tonight.”

“All right then. Call if you need us.”

All I could think about was my next move against Seth. I had no idea what I was going to do to him next. It had to be something that would spook the hell out of him, cause him a lot of misery, and maybe even send him to jail....

 

Patrice didn't show up until almost 10:00 p.m. I had taken my bath and had slid into my nightgown by then. I was relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine when she knocked.

“I won't come in,” she told me when I opened the door. “I'm tired, and I want to go straight home and unwind.” She was still in her flight attendant uniform.

“Thanks for picking up the sauce for me,” I told her as she handed me a huge bottle of mustard-based barbecue sauce.

“I would have bought more than one bottle, but this was the last one they had in stock. I'll get you some more on my next stop in Atlanta.” Patrice gave me a concerned look. “Anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“A little.”

“Well, if it has anything to do with Seth, I hope it's something bad.”

“I ran into him and some woman today.”

“Oh? What did you say to him?”

I repeated everything I had told Uncle Albert and Kingston.

“Harrumph! If that had been me, I would have done a lot more than that. By the time I got through blessing him out, he would never smile again, unless he was smiling at me.” Patrice laughed. “Anyway, I'm glad you got that out of your system.”

“Now you can go after him. . . .”

“What?” Patrice shook her head and gave me a stunned look.

“Lucy told me you used to have the hots for Seth. And I know that's why you've always resented me.”

“Look, I am not going to stand here and listen to this shit! I don't want Seth, and I don't like to hear that you and Lucy have been talking about me behind my back.”

“Forget it, Patrice. We're done,” I said tiredly. “Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to go to bed.”

“I want to get home and do the same thing. Just give me my twelve dollars, and I'll be on my way.”

“What twelve dollars?” I gulped.

“For the barbecue sauce,” she replied.

“No problem.” I rushed into the bedroom and returned with my wallet. I couldn't count out twelve dollars fast enough and hand it to her. “Do I owe you for the other bottles you brought me those other times?”

“No.” Without another word, Patrice rushed back out the door to her Volvo.

Just as I was about to put my bottle of sauce on the kitchen shelf, I realized the seal had already been broken. My paranoia was in full-blown mode. I wondered if Patrice had put boogers or spit in the bottle. Nothing surprised me after what Seth had done to me. I emptied the bottle in my kitchen sink and then threw it into the trashbin under the sink that contained a few other recyclable items. It was at that moment that I decided to sever my relationship with Patrice the next time I saw or heard from her. And because Lucy had told me that Patrice had always been jealous of me, I realized she had never been my friend in the first place. I couldn't believe some of the things she had said to me in the past, but her asking me to pay her for some barbecue sauce that she had volunteered to pick up for me was the last straw. As far as I was concerned, she had betrayed me. Just like Seth had . . .

After I finished my wine and checked my e-mail, I printed out an article about a recent local murder that I wanted to read later. The victim's daughter was a former neighbor of mine. Just as I was about to slide it into the manila file folder with other articles I had printed, a folder in the same drawer caught my eye. It was the one that contained the copies of Seth's 1999 tax documents. The same ones that he had made me tell all those lies on . . .

It felt like a very bright light clicked on in my head, and a brilliant idea came with it. Seth had committed income tax fraud! Why hadn't I thought about getting some mileage out of that before? I asked myself. A person could even go to jail for committing such a crime. That was the main reason I always told the truth every year, when I filled out my own forms. For a smart man, Seth was as stupid and naive as hell! Obviously, he had not given much thought to his actions during the years he'd spent with me. In that folder I had enough incriminating evidence against him that I could fuck up his life as much as I wanted to.

I took my time composing a carefully worded letter to the IRS, and I left no stone unturned. I explained in great detail how Seth had written off thousands of dollars' worth of expenses that he had not incurred for office supplies, long distance phone calls, and FedEx, and had taken numerous other itemized deductions to which he hadn't been entitled. He had even claimed lavish meals that his clients had paid for. There were even a few that I had paid for! I included information about the bogus donations to various charities that he had claimed, and about his gambling wins and losses. I didn't sign the letter, and I was not even sure it would get to the right person and be taken seriously. Normally, I would never have turned somebody in for a crime they'd committed unless it was particularly heinous, such as murder or child abuse. But there were exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. I knew it was a sneaky and mean thing to do, but that was what revenge was all about. However, I didn't want any of my friends to know, because I didn't want them to know just how obsessed I had become with torturing Seth.

I had no idea how the IRS handled cases that involved fraud. Even if they investigated Seth, I would have no way of knowing. But that didn't matter to me.

I made a copy of the letter to keep in my file, and I put the original in my purse so I could mail it on my way to work the next morning.

Chapter 55

Seth

D
ARLA AND
I
OCCUPIED THE COUCH IN OUR COZY LIVING ROOM,
but the same room would feel more like a tomb in a few moments. We were watching an old Denzel Washington movie on Channel Two. During a commercial break, I turned to her and casually dropped a major bombshell. “Baby, um, my son is coming to live with us.”

They said that the Devil came in many forms. One was the form of an angry black woman. Darla immediately got so enraged, her eyes looked like two black rocks that somebody had glued to her face. “What the hell do you mean, your son is coming to live with us?” she shrieked, with hot spit shooting out of her mouth onto my face. “Negro, have you lost your fucking mind? That boy belongs in a jungle!”

I didn't know how I was able to keep my voice calm without the aid of a stiff drink, which I wished I had had before I'd said anything about Darnell. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “Baby, the boy's mama can't control him. He's involved with gangs, he's not going to school, and he's running wild in every other way.”

“And what are you supposed to do?”

“I have to at least try to turn him around. He's my son, and I love him. I've always wanted to have him with me more, anyway. I told you that from the get-go.”

“What about Gayle? She's just a toddler, and having a bad influence like Darnell in her life is not what she needs.”

“So what do you want me to do? Ignore my child when I might be the only hope he has?”

“All right! You do what you have to do!” Darla threw her arms up in the air, jumped up off the couch, and stormed out of the room, cussing.

I shuffled into the kitchen and called Caroline. “I want you to pack up Darnell's things. I'll drive down tomorrow to pick him up.”

No matter how pleasantly I spoke to Caroline, I couldn't remember the last time she had spoken to me in a civil tone of voice. Her voice had become deep, dark, and menacing over the years. Today she sounded almost like Darth Vader. “Why can't you send him a plane ticket?”

“I'd rather drive down there. I . . . I need the time alone to clear my head.”

“What about Miss Thang? If she's coming with you, you'd better leave her uppity ass in the car, because I do not want to look at her butt face.”

“She's not coming with me.”

“And I'm telling you here and now, the first time my son calls me and tells me she's mistreating him, I'm coming up there to bitch slap her—and you, too, if you fuck with me while I'm doing it. Shit.”

“Now, you look, Caroline. If you feel that way, we can leave him with you.”

“No. I can't deal with this boy another day. If you don't come get him, I'm turning him over to the state. Let his ass rot in a foster home!”

“Caroline, I'll be there tomorrow evening. Please have him ready.” It took all the strength in my body for me to remain composed. “Now, good-bye, and you have a blessed evening.”

It was a six-hour drive to L.A. I cried and cussed and slapped the steering wheel off and on the whole time. I couldn't believe the mess my personal life had become. My marriage was less than ideal, my business was shaky, and to bring a troubled teenager into the equation could only make matters worse. There was not a day that went by that I didn't think about how different things might have been if I had married Rachel. I was convinced that had I done so, my son would have benefited tremendously. And maybe I would have, too....

I had eaten a light breakfast—toast, one egg, and a cup of coffee. When I arrived in L.A. around 2:00 p.m., my belly was growling. I decided to get something to eat, because I was going to need all my strength to deal with Caroline in person. She had recently moved into an apartment on some backstreet in Inglewood. To get there, I had to pass Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, one of the most popular restaurants in the area, because so many stars patronized it. I ordered a couple of pieces of fried chicken, some greens, and a soda. But as hungry as I was, I barely touched the food on my plate.

It was just as well. When I got to Caroline's gloomy street, what I saw was so disturbing, I would have puked, had there been enough food in my stomach. The parking lot of the four-story building she lived in looked like a three-ring circus. Drug dealers were openly selling drugs, whores were prancing around, advertising their wares, and young kids were smack-dab in the middle of this mess. A naked toddler darted out in front of my car, and if I had not noticed him in time, I probably would not have lived to talk about it. Everybody was looking at me like they wanted to skin me alive. My BMW was not that conspicuous. There were two others parked in front of the building, right next to hoopties and burned-out vehicles that looked like they had been sitting in the same spot for years. I got out of my car and spoke very cordially to a couple of scary-looking young men. Even though we all spoke the same language, my accent, which was cultured and refined compared to theirs, was a dead giveaway that I did not belong in this neighborhood.

“Can you tell me what side of the building Caroline Mitchell lives on?” I asked a dreadlocked young brother who was blocking the building's front entrance.

“You her caseworker or a bill collector?” he asked.

“You a cop?” asked the hooker standing next to him. She had a huge red Afro wig and wore a blue leather skirt and thigh-high boots.

“No, I'm a friend of hers. I'm her son Darnell's father,” I said, speaking as pleasantly as I possibly could.

“She on the other side.” The hooker pointed. “Uh, you want some company later on?”

I smiled. “Not today, but thank you, anyway.”

Caroline lived in the first apartment on the second floor. The elevator was out of order, so I took the stairs up, huffing and puffing like a man twice my age. I was surprised to find the front door open when I got to her unit. The first person I saw was a pitch-black dude with an angry look on his face. He was stretched out on the living room couch, with a greasy gray do-rag wrapped around his head.

“Is Caroline home? I'm Darnell's father, and I'm here to pick him up,” I said. I stood in the doorway with my car key still in my hand.

Instead of responding, the dude sat up and looked toward a back room. “Wooman, get your bum out here straightaway, wooman! Somebody here to see at you! And hurry it up so you can get in de kitchen and fix me a something to eat!” He had a foreign accent, and because his skin was so dark, I assumed he had come either from the dark side of one of the Caribbean islands or straight out of Africa.

Caroline came flying into the room like a bat out of hell, and she looked like one, too. The cute girl I had known in high school now resembled an old hag. Dark circles surrounded her eyes like moats. Her lips were dry and chapped, and her skin looked like sandpaper. She wore a faded blue denim dress with stains in various colors on the front and sides, flip-flops that looked big enough for Hulk Hogan, and a blond wig that was so askew, it looked like she had been flying.

She looked at me with a scowl on her face, of course, but she turned to the man on the couch and addressed him first. “You ain't paralyzed, Oyey. If you want something to eat, you better take your black ass in the kitchen and fix it yourself. If you want a woman to slave for you, you better go on back to that village in Nigeria where you came from. Shit.” She turned back to me, with the scowl on her face that was even more severe. “It's about time you got your ass down here, Seth. That boy is about to drive me crazy!” she yelled, waving her arms as she strode over to me.

It was obvious that I was not going to receive an invitation to stay around long enough to do any type of socializing. And based upon all the empty beer cans strewn about the room, I had a feeling a whole lot of “socializing” went on in this place.

“Is Darnell ready to go?”

“You damn right he ready to go! And not soon enough!” Caroline hollered. She took a few steps back in the direction she had just come from. “Darnell! Get your black ass out here, boy! And be quick about it! I ain't playing with you!”

A few moments later, Darnell slunk into the room. It was hard to believe that this brooding young man was the same son I had cuddled when he was a toddler. This boy looked like he wanted to cuss out the world. Menacing tattoos decorated his arms and neck. His baggy clothes looked as if he had slept in them.

“Son, are you ready to go?” I asked, placing my hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I guess,” he growled, rolling his eyes. “I ain't got no choice.”

“I kept telling your ass that if you didn't straighten up and fly right, I was going to send you to live with your daddy!” Caroline barked, hands on her hips. “Maybe he can beat some sense into your hard head.”

I was so sick of people telling me to beat my child that my jaw started twitching. I looked at Caroline, and I did not like the smug look on her face. “Caroline, you know I don't believe in beating children. I told you that years ago. There are more effective ways to discipline a young person these days.”

“It don't matter to me what you do to get this fool to behave! He ain't my problem no more!”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed a sad look cross my son's face, and it made my chest ache. With mothers like Caroline, it was no wonder inner-city black boys were in such a sad state.

After a few more minutes of small talk on my part, I excused myself and escorted Darnell to my car. And not a minute too soon. Three boys around my son's age had already surrounded my vehicle, looking at it like it was something good to eat.

It was a tense drive back to the Bay Area. We stopped only for gas and snacks, and Darnell kept his headphones on most of the time. During the last twenty miles to our destination, he decided to talk.

“You going to hook me up with a car of my own?”

“A car? Don't you think that's a little premature?”

“
Premature.
What that mean?”

“There are other things we need to focus on before we talk about you getting a car. How are your grades?”

“All right, I guess. They been passing me on to the next grade every year,” he said with a shrug. Then he looked at me with a strange expression on his face. “You still with that same woman?”

“If you mean Darla, the answer is yes.”

“I was hoping you'd tell me you and Rachel got back together. She was the coolest grown woman I ever met. She still in Berkeley?”

“Uh, I think so. Why?”

“Can I hook up with her some time?”

“Absolutely not! That woman has caused me a lot of misery since we broke up, and I will not allow you to communicate with her at all. Is that clear?”

“Yeah. Why? What did she do to you for you to be sounding so mad?”

“That's not important! The important thing is I don't want you to have a damn thing to do with Rachel. Now you forget about her. She's out of our lives. I'm through with her!”

It would not be long before I found out that Rachel was
not
through with me. . . .