Between Brothers Read online

  Laughing hysterically, Biggie adopted a mock tone of obedience. “I’ll leave you kids alone now, Terry. Remember to put that jimmy hat on tonight! Wouldn’t want to ruin that sterling future career of yours! Later, nigga!”

  His eyes still burning with rage and exasperation, Terence punched the flash button. Dammit, why couldn’t he have some supportive family other than Granny, families like Brandon and Larry’s? Brandon’s brothers were like his hanging partners, and his parents were his trusted friends. Larry’s parents had helped plan every aspect of his life, and his father had provided him with every advantage possible. And what did Terence have in his family?

  A mother who had damn near dropped off the face of the earth.

  A father he had only met once, when Tony made a desperate visit to his elementary school playground and interrupted Terence’s playtime with friends. He’d choked out something about how Terence was “his boy” and roughhoused with him for a few minutes before stuffing a Rawlings cowhide football into his arms. Terence had grinned wide, until he’d realized his father was trudging off toward a police cruiser parked nearby. He never saw Tony again, but he still had that football. Terence’s brain ached with the question that haunted him every few months. What did I do?

  As Lisa walked toward him, he trained his boiling eyes her way. He didn’t feel like talking about Biggie or his parents right now, least of all to her. “Don’t ask.”

  Her eyes full of what looked like sympathy, Lisa placed her arms around his waist. Terence realized she had started up the Isley Brothers CD; Ron Isley’s soaring falsetto filled the room. The song was “Let Me Cry,” but Terence didn’t exactly feel like crying right now. As Lisa bore her soft, warm body into his, he could smell the Rapture perfume that he’d purchased for her a few months back. He wondered if she had worn this scent on purpose today, planning to win him over. Before long, such suspicions were far from him. Everything was familiar again—the curve of her fleshy lips, the peachy smell of her hair, even the warm heave of her bosom against his aching midsection. As he surrendered to the call of his body, he made one self-defensive statement, hoping to protect his ego.

  “You realize this don’t necessarily mean anything?”

  The flame in Lisa’s eyes told him his plea was falling on deaf ears. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 11

  . . . . . . . . . . . .

  CLASH OF THE TITANS

  Nico Lane opened the back door of his Mercedes and flashed a calm smile at the dumpy white man waiting at the curb. “Mr. Hollings, please join me. There’s plenty of room.”

  From his place next to Nico in the backseat of the Mercedes, Rolly Orange sucked his teeth impatiently. He wanted to get this little hobnob over ASAP. He’d told Sheryl he was going to a doctor’s appointment, so he had plenty of time before he was due back at Ellis Center, but he was still uneasy. He’d driven clear across town to Anacostia, where Nico had picked him up before driving to a secluded lot behind Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. But what if one of those punk Highland kids was suspicious of him? Orange didn’t like chancing these types of meetings in broad daylight. Relieved that they’d finally picked up Hollings, Orange told himself to relax. He leaned over to make eye contact with Hollings as Nico sat between them like an inconspicuous matchmaker.

  “Mr. Hollings, pleasure to make your acquaintance. Nico has told me quite a bit about your, uh, abilities.” Orange tried hard to keep from making eye contact with the private detective. He prayed the man would not be tempted to tell anyone a former councilman was riding around with the top dealer in Northwest D.C. “I understand you have contacts on the Highland campus, that you can keep tabs on and research the habits and patterns of some troublesome elements there.”

  His jaw set in resolution and his eyes staring straight ahead, Hollings exhaled softly before responding. His breath filled the car with the smell of stale cigar smoke. “Anything, anyone you need tracked, I can do it. Nico knows my work. Who you need me to watch?”

  Orange handed a thin manila envelope to Nico, who slowly slid it over to Hollings. “You’ll find the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of four men we think may get in the way of a project Nico and I are working on,” Orange said. “I need you to get back to me with every important detail of their lives, things like—”

  “Where they live, how often they’re there, how they’re doing in school, who they’re screwin’, what their family situations are, and what’s most precious to them. I leave anything out?”

  As Orange scratched his head in admiration, Nico placed a hand on each man’s shoulder. “I love it when a plan comes together. Orange, Hollings here will get all the four-one-one we need. You can cease your silly little harassment of the boys for now.” He turned toward Hollings and winked. “You’ll get a kick out of this—Rolly here sent a threatening letter to one of these kids and has a couple other scare tactics planned. They’re child’s play, though. I need you to get us a real game plan.”

  Hollings stared ahead, his eyes impassive. “Check.”

  Nico smiled widely, showing all his teeth. “All right then. Rolly, get back to Ellis Center and keep finding ways to lose money. Hollings will handle the kids.”

  It was Saturday evening, and Lawrence Whitaker, Sr., was perturbed. Fiddling with his Saks Fifth Avenue tie from the passenger seat of Larry’s Lexus, he was reaming his son for rushing him. They were running late for their date with Ashley’s parents.

  “Sorry, Pops,” Larry replied as he careened the Lexus through the crowded intersection of Pennsylvania and Twenty-first. Larry senior had been complaining since Larry picked him up from the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill, and it was getting old. But Larry wasn’t letting Pops get to him; the Terence Trent D’Arby in his CD player was a welcome distraction. “Ashley and I have had our hands full today, between my networking meetings regarding the community center, a campaign meeting, and a ton of other deals. I gave you the wrong time for tonight’s dinner.”

  “Never mind that now, you guys,” Amy Whitaker chirped from the backseat, where she was holding a polite conversation with Ashley.

  Larry stole a glance at his stepmother in the rearview mirror. His father finally had what Larry senior considered the ultimate in a trophy wife: young, nubile, and, most important, white. If Larry had seen Amy on a street, one stranger observing another, he’d have pegged her as a fashion model, or maybe a classy Sports Illustrated girl. With her flowing blond mane, thin lips, slight hips, and shapely breasts, she could pass for Heather Locklear. Larry had never been given a straight answer regarding her age, but he knew she couldn’t be older than thirty-five, which would make her at least twelve years younger than Larry senior.

  Larry had decided in recent years that Amy was a pretty good person. He supposed that was why he rarely thought of the day he first met her six years ago, when he’d accidentally walked into his father’s office and found the two of them half-dressed and using his father’s massive teakwood desk as a makeshift mattress. Larry hadn’t exactly been surprised to catch his father in a compromising position. Even Amy’s color hadn’t thrown him off. He’d always figured Larry senior’s preference for light-skinned sisters would eventually translate into white women.

  He was surprised now at how rarely he thought of that day, or of the subsequent months during which his parents had divorced. In truth, he had never thought of his parents as having a real marriage; it had always been more like a congenial arrangement. Perhaps that was why he was able to keep from hating Amy the way he felt he should. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else.

  As he came to an abrupt halt at a stoplight, Larry tried to escape his father’s rants by bringing his stepmother into the conversation. “Amy, are you gonna take this old man around town and see the sights after dinner tonight?” He was actually happy she’d come along. He was counting on her to keep his father and Ashley’s dad from making a complete mess of the evening.

  “Well, Larry, you know me,” Amy sai
d, her pleasant, airy voice wafting through the car. “I have to do it up wherever I go. Your father and I have reservations for a midnight cruise tonight, and tomorrow he’s taking me shopping at Hecht’s and every other store of my choosing. Aren’t you, dear?”

  Finally taking his mind off his hundred-dollar tie, Larry senior gruffly acknowledged his wife’s ribbing. “Yes, I’ll be spending all of my children’s inheritance on you before we’re through, my love.”

  “All right, Pop, I wanna know the real scoop. How’re my sisters doing?” They were nearing The Four Seasons now, and Larry wanted to get some real conversation in before the mutual inquisition kicked into full gear.

  “Laura is just a gorgeous little angel, as far as I can see, but I’m obviously biased,” Larry senior declared.

  “She loves the birthday gift you got her, Larry,” Amy offered. “That little rocking horse stays by her bed, and she guards it like a jealous lover. She doesn’t even ride it that often, but some nights when I walk by the room, she’s just sitting there on it, smacking it around, saying, ‘Larry, Larry, Larry!’ I asked her the other day why she likes it so much, and she giggled and said, ‘Larry gave it to me.’ That’s all that matters to her.”

  Against his will, a smile of pride welled up and burst across Larry’s face. Laura was probably the most confusing little person in his life. Six years earlier, his father’s choice to leave his mother for a younger white woman had bordered on a criminal offense in his mind. When Larry senior called him freshman year to announce that he and Amy were expecting a child, Larry had barely registered any emotion. He had not expected to love this mixed child, had figured it would only be a tangible reminder to his mother of the rejection she had suffered.

  Then he had seen little Laura during his spring break, just a month after she was born. He still remembered her new-baby smell, her unjudging, trusting eyes, and her crinkly little smile.

  They had been soul mates instantly. Even now, as her features were taking a more pronounced shape, her resemblance to Amy becoming clearer every day despite her swarthy complexion, Larry could look at Laura and judge her as his baby sister, and that alone. She could make him forget the realities of racism, the delicate difficulties inherent in interracial dating, and his mother’s challenging new life as a single woman.

  “What about my other sister?” He hadn’t heard from Vera since she had written him from Kiev almost three months ago. He was always promising to write her more often, but the hectic pace of his life these days just wasn’t allowing much time.

  “She called the other day for money, which I didn’t think she was allowed to do.” Larry senior wore a quizzical look on his face. “I think she’s homesick but too proud to admit it. Fortunately she’ll be back in the States in a couple more months. I don’t know how my child wound up over behind the Iron Curtain, trying to tell people about God. She sure didn’t get that idea from me. My parents sheltered us from religion, until we were old enough to make rational decisions about which one to follow.”

  “Oh? And which one have you chosen, Dad?” Larry had heard this bull before. His father liked to brag about how enlightened he was for never following any one religion, unlike the sheep who sat in churches Sunday after Sunday as a simple matter of habit. Larry didn’t happen to think this was anything to brag about. As far as he was concerned, both he and his parents were happy heathens, too shallow to be concerned with what would happen after life on earth.

  Larry senior coughed into his hand and reached for a handkerchief before responding. “Well, smart-ass, I have decided that I’m not up to par for any of the organized religions, how’s that? No one can do the things I’ve done in the business world and truly follow the tenets of the Bible, Koran, or that crazy concoction those Jehovah’s Witnesses use.”

  “Leopard never changes his spots, right, Pops?” Father and son laughed boisterously, slapping hands loudly as Amy and Ashley looked on in amusement.

  “Aren’t they just adorable?” Ashley said to Amy. “Things rarely get this animated around the Blasingame household, even on family vacations.” A tone of slight concern seeped into her voice. “I hope they tone it down some when we get to The Four Seasons. I don’t know if my parents could handle this much irreverence.”

  Looking out the window, Amy smiled widely. “Well, we’re here now, hon, don’t worry. My husband is a master chameleon, and your boyfriend didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Five minutes later, the foursome emerged from the glass elevator and stepped into the lobby of The Four Seasons’ penthouse floor. Near the elevator stood a tall, high-yellow man in a pepper gray worsted suit and a short, almond-skinned woman holding his hand.

  “We are so glad to see you,” Bartholomew Blasingame intoned smoothly.

  “Larry Whitaker, Bart, pleasure to meet you.” Larry senior snapped out of his midwestern ethnic vernacular and into the official business tone that he reserved for whites and his more stuffy black business contacts. “This is my wife, Amy.” From her position cradled under Larry senior’s right arm, Amy extended a hand to Mrs. Blasingame.

  “You must be Bonita. It’s so nice to finally meet you after hearing so many great things about you and your daughter,” Amy said.

  Cracking a guarded smile, Bonita Blasingame took Amy’s hand but made immediate eye contact with Larry. “I knew my little girl had good taste. You are a handsome young man.”

  As Mrs. Blasingame grabbed Ashley’s hand and pulled her out in front of the party, Larry trailed behind his father and Bart. He was accustomed to flattery, but Bonita’s tone rattled him. She had spoken without the sparkling touch of humor that usually went with such a remark. Instead she sounded oddly passive, almost as if she were sizing up an attractive car instead of a person.

  The party engaged in small talk as they took their seats at a round table near the center of the club’s ornate dining room, which was decorated with antique furniture and art. A stuffy senior waiter with a hangdog expression took their orders from menus with no prices listed on them, and then the men were ready to begin battle. Cupping his silver-handled pipe in his right hand, Blasingame crossed his legs and began the oral exercise. “So, Larry, how is business?”

  Enjoying a chance to lay out his accomplishments, Larry senior let loose with an anecdote-filled, irreverent summary of the odyssey of his businesses, pausing long enough to allow fluff questions from Ashley and Bonita. Having heard his father’s self-congratulatory tales more times than he could count, Larry tuned out by honing in on the soft sounds of the jazz quintet in the far corner. The harpist was especially talented.

  Several long minutes later, Larry senior concluded, “Anyway, I figure when you’ve got profit margins as fat as mine, strong cash flow, and well-managed debt, why would I ever consider taking my company public? All that would do is open me up to the intrusions of shareholders, the SEC, and even more bankers than I have clogging my phone lines today.”

  Blasingame narrowed his eyes. “Exactly why are the bankers clogging your phone lines these days?”

  Momentarily breaking eye contact, Larry senior leaned back in his seat slightly before continuing, his legs artfully crossed in front of him. “Ah, I’m gettin’ calls from people claiming to have potential buyers for my business all the time now. They don’t believe a black man can expand a multimillion-dollar business without selling out to the powers that be.”

  Blasingame stroked his bearded chin, making no effort to conceal skepticism. “Well, if your company is as solid as you say, with profit growth, strong cash position, and low debt, who wouldn’t want to take it over? I’m working right now on a major bond offering by a Fortune 100 retail company in California. You know why they’re selling some billion dollars’ worth of Class C bonds right now? They’re snapping up every sound, medium-sized consumer retail chain they can get their hands on, given certain criteria, of course. In fact, yours sounds like it would be an appetizing target. You say you’re in grocery and electronics, right?”
r />   “Now hold up, Chumpy.” Slipping into a bit of Ebonic slang, Larry senior leaned forward in his chair and planted an elbow on the white tablecloth. The message was clear: he was not amused. “Whitaker Holdings’ businesses are not, never have been, never will be for sale! What do you think I’d do, deprive my boy here of the chance to take over his pop’s company someday, and support your daughter in very comfortable fashion, I might add?”

  Tipping his head to the left, Bart chuckled respectfully. “Sir, you’ll have to excuse me for being a believer in the free market. If your businesses are as well managed as you claim, it seems only proper that someone with deeper pockets buy them, make you a truly wealthy man, and then expand on that foundation to build them into nationwide chains or franchises. You don’t think you could take the cash windfall and start up some new businesses? Aren’t you up for the challenge?”

  His courage called into question, Larry senior wound around to a different tack. “You know, I think it’s best we respect each other’s differences, Bart. We disagree philosophically. Let’s just agree we each serve a vital role in this nation’s economy. I add value to consumers’ lives by bringing them tangible products and services, at an efficient and affordable cost. I enrich people’s lives. Along the way, I provide qualified individuals with stable employment, enabling them to support their families and contribute to society.” He paused for dramatic effect. Larry had seen his father do this millions of times.

  “You, Barty, on the other hand, serve a role by helping the rich get richer, and that’s not all bad. You take a company selling bonds for cash to support its operations, guide it to a buyer looking for a return on investment, and take a fat fee out of the difference between the buying and selling price. Granted, you really add no value—the buyer and seller could interact directly if they wanted to—but you fulfill the psychological need that each has for a ‘professional.’ ” Larry senior held up his hands and wiggled his index fingers to accentuate the sarcasm behind his remark. “All in all, I’m sure, an honorable calling in its own right.”