Till You Hear From Me: A Novel (4 page)

The Rev leaned toward the unseen reporter and pointed a long, slender finger in his direction. “And so what if they did? Brother Malcolm used to say when white America gets a cold, Black America gets pneumonia. It’s the same today. New paradigm, old paradigm, race is, was, and always will be the dominant force in American life and the sooner Barack
Hussein
Obama realizes it, the better off he’ll be.”

Then he turned directly to the camera, which up until that point he had ignored so completely, I didn’t think he was even aware of it.

“You owe Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the whole black community a public apology, Mister President, and until he gets it, I remind you of that old saying,
the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

He paused for what I guess was supposed to be dramatic effect. “Jeremiah Wright is my friend.”

What the hell did that mean?

Was he using the Internet to declare himself an enemy of the president? The same president I was still hoping might offer me a job? There weren’t enough Excedrin Migraine tablets in the world to stop the throb that was now beating in my brain nonstop.

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose tightly, which didn’t do anything but make me want to sneeze. I picked up the phone and punched in Miss Iona’s number.

FOUR

“T
ELL ME AGAIN WHY YOU NEEDED ALL THIS STUFF SO FAST ON A
F
RIDAY
night?” Toni said as soon as Wes opened the door. She was standing in front of him close enough for Wes to smell her perfume. “Because I’m beginning to suspect this was just an excuse to get me up here so you can try to have your way with me.”

Wes had already showered and shaved, set two plates and a couple of forks out at the counter, and put a bottle of Pinot Grigio in the freezer for a fast chill when Toni rang the bell and he buzzed her in. He felt good, energized, and on top of the situation. He smiled to himself. The situation wasn’t the only thing he hoped to be on top of before the evening was over. He had just wrapped up a busy week with no time for anything but business and Toni’s exhausted fiancé had flown in the weekend before with roses so she wouldn’t think the poor man was too distracted to remember her twenty-seventh birthday. Wes hadn’t been in the mood to call in a backup, so the truth was, he was horny as hell. Toni probably was, too. Her
fiancé had a bright future, but based on what she’d told Wes, he didn’t seem to be very creative between the sheets.

Wes took the bag of Chinese food out of her arms and pulled her gently inside. She slipped off her coat and tossed it casually on the closest chair. She was wearing a slim black skirt, a white silk blouse, and black pumps with four-inch heels.

“Exactly what
stuff
are we talking about, Miss Cassidy?” He grinned. “My research? My dinner?”

Toni ran her fingers through her hair in a lovely gesture that Wes had only ever seen in the movies and tossed her head, her smile revealing small, white, slightly pointed teeth. He spread his grin a little wider.

“My pussy?”

She raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. “Getting a bit presumptuous, aren’t we?”

“Don’t worry,” Wes said, putting the food down and leaning over to give her soft, fragrant cheek a quick kiss. “Your secret is safe with me.”

She laughed and handed him a bright red file folder. “I have no secrets. You know that.”

“It is your greatest charm,” he said, opening the slender folder. “Is this all you got?”

“There’s a lot more online,” she said, opening the white takeout containers and sniffing the contents of each. “I put the links in the email for you. These are just to give you a sense of what the guy’s been up to.”

Wes took a cursory look through the things she had printed out. A piece about the kickoff of the registration campaign. A piece about the Rev’s group BAC-UP!—Black Activist Clergy United for Progress—and how they had managed to get all these churches to work together. Some pictures of the Rev standing on somebody’s front porch with voter registration forms.

Talk about old-school
, Wes thought, glad all over again that he had had the good sense to head north as fast as he could figure out a way to get there.

“Why are you so interested in this guy all of a sudden?”

“My boy called me from the Republican National Committee. His people are worried about Georgia in the midterms, and the presence of one hundred thousand new, energized Democratic voters does not make them happy.”

Toni was spooning out the meal on both plates while Wes’s eyes scanned the pages quickly. He would check the videos tomorrow. The food aromas demanded his attention and he heard his stomach growling loudly. He closed the folder and put it aside.

“Go on,” she said, as he removed the wine from the freezer and reached for two wineglasses.

“They want to know three things,” Wes said, opening the wine efficiently and pouring them each a glass. “How he did it. How they can stop him from doing it again, and how they can get hold of those names.”

“Your contact told you all that on the phone?”

Wes shook his head. “Paranoid as these guys are, they’ll barely tell you when they want to meet, much less why they’re calling. All he said was they wanted to talk about the recent high-volume voter registration efforts in Georgia and since I was from there, they thought I might be able to assist them.”

“And can you assist them, Mr. Harper?” she said, raising her glass.

“I can do better than that,” he said, clinking his glass against hers lightly. “I can introduce them to my pastor.”

She took a sip of her wine. “Are they also in need of spiritual counseling?”

“My pastor happens to be Reverend Doctor Horace A. Dunbar, the man of the hour.”

Her eyes widened. “He’s your pastor?”

Wes nodded and took a bite of his Mongolian Beef. “I grew up in his church.”

Toni put down her glass and shook her head.

“What?”

“Why can’t I picture you as a little kid sitting in Sunday school?”

“Because you have a woefully limited imagination,” he said. “I was a member of the junior choir and treasurer of the Youth Fellowship for three years running.”

She laughed again. “What happened the fourth year?”

He grinned at her again. “I discovered the pursuit of pussy and my church attendance fell off a little, but you didn’t let me finish.”

She took another small sip of her wine. Toni wasn’t a big eater. “By all means, finish.”

“The Rev. Dunbar is also my dad’s best friend.”

“You’re kidding.”

Wes shook his head. “I kid you not. They have coffee together three or four mornings a week. All I have to do is ask my dad if I can stay with him for a couple of days and all the information I need will come walking up the front steps.”

“Well, that wraps it up with a bow,” she said. “You can sell out the race and betray your father’s trust all in one fell swoop.”

“It’s a gift.”

That was another thing he liked about Toni. She shared his ability to dismiss any claims of racial solidarity that conflicted with the interests of their clients. He thought of the two of them as part of the vanguard of post-racial African American professionals who were free at last to pimp the race without pretending they were trying to save it.

“Did you tell the RNC guy all this?”

“Hell, no,” Wes said, refilling their glasses. “Too much information all at one time isn’t good for white folks. Anything of particular interest in the video clips?”

“Not much,” Toni said, nibbling a piece of broccoli delicately.
“There is one with the good reverend and some of his contemporaries really roasting Obama and then one from two days ago where he suggests in an interview with
The Atlanta Constitution
that unchecked diversity may result in black churches being forced to serve tacos and sangria on Communion Sunday.”

Wes choked on a spring roll. “He said
what?
”

“Tacos and sangria,” Toni said when Wes stopped coughing. “The whole thing is kind of bizarre actually. He’s apparently still really mad at the president.”

“All those old guys are still mad.”

“Because of Jeremiah Wright?”

“That’s part of it,” Wes said, helping himself to the last spring roll. “But I think it’s just hard for them to admit that whether they were ready or not, the torch has been passed.”

“But that’s what they were all working for, wasn’t it? A chance for black folks to rise and be first-class American citizens?” she said. “Well, they did it. They won. They should be celebrating their victory.”

“They don’t know how to celebrate,” Wes said. “They’re warriors. What they know how to do is fight, struggle, organize. Stepping aside to make room for new blood isn’t part of their makeup.”

She looked at him and grinned. “So I guess Etta James spoke for them all when she offered to whip Beyoncé’s young ass for singing her song at the inauguration.”

“Exactly,” he said. “That wasn’t about the song. That was about being
iconed
to death when all she really wanted to do was sing.”

“What does the Reverend Dunbar want?”

“I won’t know that until I get down there and have a chance to talk to him. These guys are ripe to flip their party affiliations, and that would be a real coup. It’s just a matter of using that anger to our advantage.”

“I think you are the most perfectly amoral person I’ve ever met.”

“Coming from you,” he said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I meant it as one.”

“They’re being so damn secretive about the meeting, they want to get together on Sunday morning at seven
A.M.
They told me to come alone, but I said I had to have one staffer there.
You.”

“Why thank you, sir. You know I always like to be the only girl.”

“You just be on your best behavior.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll wear my corporate drag. Dark pants suit. String of pearls.”

“But not too conservative,” he said. “These guys always like to see a little leg.”

“Oh, yeah? Any of ’em ass men? Or are they just assholes?”

He laughed and stood up. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

He picked up the plates and stacked them in the kitchen. That was enough business for one night. He sat down on the couch and took the wine with him. Toni came to sit beside him, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet up between them.

“You figure you’ll have to go down there awhile if all this works out?”

“Probably,” he said, gently massaging the foot closest to him. “Why?”

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Maybe I can come and visit you. We could make out on the couch in your dad’s rec room.”

He squeezed each well-pedicured toe gently. “My dad doesn’t have a rec room.”

“Well, where did you make out when you were a kid?”

“I was in boarding school. Most of my making out was between me and my strong right hand.”

She laughed and opened her eyes. “Why does that turn me on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But forget about it. If you have to come down, which I do not anticipate, you’ll stay at the Four Seasons.”

“Why is that?” she said, touching him softly without unzipping his pants. “Are you ashamed to introduce me to your father?”

He looked at Toni’s perfect face, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect,
perfect
breasts, and smiled at the very idea of anyone being ashamed of anything associated with this girl.

“Shame has nothing to do with it,” he said, squeezing her left breast lightly. “My father is an old man with a weak heart, and you, beautiful girl, are a screamer.”

She threw back her head and laughed, then ran her hands through her hair again in that movie star gesture he loved. “Whose fault is that, Big Daddy?”

“Yours,” he said, not caring if she was just buttering him up. Lying was his favorite kind of foreplay. “Which is why you’ve got to be punished.”

She stood up, slid her skirt down over her hips, stepped gracefully out of her silky pink barely there thong, but slipped back into her black stilettos. That was one of the sexiest things about Toni, he thought. She always wore heels that lifted up that fine ass like she was putting it on a platter.