Commitment (77 page)
Authors: Nia Forrester
“What up?”
“What happened
between
you and Keisha?”
“She got in my face
and I told her ass what was up.
Come to think of it, what you bring her to the club for?”
“Smooth, I wouldn’t worry ‘bout
that
right now if I was you.”
“Yeah?
You kno
w that bitch talked to my wife?
My
wife
, kid.
You better make sure you tell her . . .”
“Smooth, she say she gon’ put a charge on you.”
Shawn was momentarily silenced.
“A what?”
“A rape charge.”
Shawn blinked.
“Smoot
h, I tried to talk to her, man.
But she say that . . .”
“When
was this shit supposed to . .
?”
“I don’ know, man.
But I had to let you know that shit was about a drop. She say she pressing charges as soon as she
get back to
New York.”
“When she leaving?”
“With me and D.
Tonight.”
“
Where that bitch at right now?” Shawn asked.
He bit down hard on his lower lip.
“C’mon man, y
ou don’ wan’ do nothin’ stupid.
All you need to do . . .”
“Yeah, go ahead.
Tell me what I need to do when I got a rape charge hangin’ over my head,” Shawn said.
Next to him Brendan’s head whipped around at the words ‘rape charge’.
“Smooth, I tried to tell her that . . .”
“You need to try harder,” Shawn cut him off.
“I’ll do what I can, man.
But the way she
sound right now,” Mike sighed.
“It might not go like we want it to.”
“Everybod
y knows I didn’t rape that ‘ho.
Everybody on the tour saw her all up in my shit
!
”
“I know that Smooth.”
Mike sounded distraught.
“Handle that shit, Mike. I’m tellin’ you.”
He
hung up and looked at Brendan.
“Keisha.
That shit is comin’ back.”
“
Damn
, Shawn.
A rape charge
and you’re done.
Even a robbery charge wouldn’t be as bad.”
“B. I get that.
You
don’t need to rub the shit in.
What should I do?”
Brendan sighed.
“Pay her off.”
Shawn snorted. “Give that
‘
ho money?
From my blood, sweat and tea . . .”
“Shawn, what’s the alternative? You want this in the papers?
Just when you have a new label, when you and Riley just patched shit up?”
Shawn chewed
on a piece of
loose flesh
at the edge of his forefinger.
Riley.
What would she say to her
mother? To her friends? To people at her job?
He buried his face in his hands.
“She’ll know it ain’t even true,” Brendan said.
“I’m not worried a
bout Riley thinking it’s true,” Shawn said impatiently.
“It’s the people around her.”
The pressure they would put on her to end the relati
onship would go without saying.
In the first year of marriage,
infidelity and a felony charge.
Who in their right mind
wouldn’t
tell her
to get the hell away from him?
And Lorna on the subject of rape . . . hell, he might as well
fold up the tents and go home.
No matter how you looked at it, he hadn’t made her daughter’s life better; that was for sure.
“Anybody who was on the tour knows what went on, man.”
“B, it won’t make a difference.
If she just gets it into one newspaper in New York that I raped her, it’s all over.”
“That’s w
hy you need to make it go away.
Pay her off.”
Shawn chewed hard
er on the skin around his nail.
Maybe that was all he could do. Make it go away.
Otherwise he would lose everything that was important to him – his reputation, his career, his
wife
.
“A’ight,” he said resolutely.
“How we gon’ do this?”
g
Things m
oved pretty quickly after that. Too quickly.
The next morning, he finished shooting the music video and Brendan canceled all of his other engagements, including the show h
e had planned for that weekend.
The Arista people weren’t happy, but considering how unhappy they were going to be when they heard about a pending sexual assault charge, it seemed like a good idea to fly to New York right away and ta
ke care of that problem first.
Shawn reached Riley at work but she was still tired and in a crappy mood about having to leave him so soon, so he decided to wait until he saw
her in person to drop the bomb.
And it wasn’t as though he was too
eager to share the news anyway.
He wanted to believe that this would
n’t change things between them.
He had to believe it.
Since he’d left
the airport
Mike had called three or four times and as far as he knew, Kei
sha hadn’t acted on her threat.
But there
was no guarantee she wouldn’t.
Shawn flew out with Brendan late in the afternoon and got to New York somet
ime after midnight local time.
Rather than go home, they stayed in a
hotel
near the airport.
They had an
eight-thirty
meeting with the lawyers
scheduled for the following morning,
and as long as nothing had happened yet, Shawn preferred to do that before telling Riley anything. If he was lucky, the picture wouldn’t look as dismal after he found out what his rights were and maybe he could give her a reassuring p
icture along with the bad news.
Maybe he would have worked out
some
kind of “settlement” of Keisha’s imagined grievances before cros
s
ing
the threshold of his home.
That was preferable,
to go home without any shadow of his mistake with Keisha hanging over
his head and that of his wife.
Brendan had been trying to reach Mike since they’d l
anded, and there was no answer. Darryl was MIA as well.
Sometime around
three
a.m., Shawn managed to fall into a restless
sleep.
Three
hours
later,
he was
awakened
by pounding on the door
to his suite
.
He staggered over to open it
.
Brendan was already dressed and ready to go.
“It’s happened
,
man,”
he said.
“I just got
the
call.
She pressed charges last night
.”
g
Chapter Seventeen
Riley
was waiting for him downstairs when he arrived with Brendan at the offices of Graves, Baker &
Pennell
,
pacing in front of the security desk with her arms folded
. W
hen they walked in
she
pulled off the knit hat she was wearing
and came toward them
.
“Shawn, what’s
wrong?” her
eyes were wide and worried.
He’d called her as soon as
Brendan gave him the news and
told her
that
he
was in the city and needed her to meet him at his lawyer
s’ offices, no questions asked.
She was half-asleep but agreed right away, so
unding frightened.
He’d
wanted to be able to tell her there was no reason to be afraid, but that
simply
wasn’t true and he’d promised himself he would not lie to her ever again.
Shawn held
her arm
now
and led her to the
elevators, hitting the button.
Brendan stood a few feet behind them.
“
I
got a call from Mike,” he told her, trying to
keep his voice level
.
“He told me Keisha said she was pressing rape charges against me.”
Riley
raised a hand to her mouth but said nothing.
“So I flew in last night to take care of it . . .”
Riley
’s made a face. “Last night?
Why didn’t you come home?”
“It was late
and . . .
”
The elevator came and they stepped on, Brendan following.
“ . . . and I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Wake me?
she
asked,
incredulous.
“Jesus
Shawn.
So what’s going on now?”
“She
filed a complaint
.”
Riley
blinked.
She
looked the way he felt
—
numb.
She took his hand and pulled him toward her,
standing on her toes to put
her arms
about
his neck
.
She held
him like that until the elevator sto
pped.
Riley
followed silently, holding his hand as they were led to his attorney’s office.
Doug Scanlon had been representing Shawn since he was eighteen years old, when he was still a green kid from the streets of D.C. who wasn’t inclined to trust older
white guys in suits.
But Doug made no pretense of understanding Shawn’s experiences or in some instances,
even
sharing his point of view—
he just did his best to accomplish whatever obj
ectives Shawn laid out for him.
On occasion he would advise aga
inst a certain course of action
or suggest another more advantageous one, but he was never co
ndescending, never patronizing.
Riley
had met him only once before.
Today, his face was grave as
he
nodded his greetings, offered seats to all three of them and closed his office door.
“First, I
have to
advise you Shawn that we
can
speak privately
if you wish.
In fact, I would advise it.
I’ll need your com
plete candor and with your wife
here, you may feel .
. .”
“Nah, that’s a
’ight, Shawn said impatiently.
“Let’s talk about how we can take care of this.”
“Where we stand right now is that an arrest warrant has been
issued.”
Doug’s hands were clasped beneath his chin, elbows resting on
his desk.
He pursed his lips.
“After you called me this morning, I arranged for you to surrender sometime this afternoon in the Bronx where she
pressed the charges.
You’ll be booked and processed, and then arraigned maybe this afternoon, most likely tomorrow morning.”
“He’ll have to spend the night in jail?”
Riley
asked.
She gripped his hand tighter.
Doug nodded.
“
Yes, that’s l
ikely
.”
“And then what?”
“He’ll make bai
l
and
more than likely
be
released pending trial.”
Shawn exhaled and shook
his head in disbelief.
“Trial.
She’s lying though.
I can’t believe they’d just take her word on some serious shit like this.”
“A lot of times that’s a
ll they have in the beginning.
”
“Did she say when this was supposed to have happened?”
Riley
spoke up again.
“I don’t have a statem
ent of the charges,” Doug said.
“But we’ll get all that when he goes i
n.
Now, what about you, Shawn?
You have any idea when she might say this happened?”
“Yeah.
I
think I might know.
But that was
like
months ago though.
It didn’t even happen in New York.
And it was definitely not rape.”
“The timing doesn’t matter as much as
one
m
ight think
.
And you’re saying
you had
consensual
sex?”
“Hell yeah it was consensual.
If anything, she was the one . . .”
“Just because there wasn’t force doesn’t preclude her from saying it was non-consensua
l?
Was there alcohol involved?
Was she drunk?”
Shawn shrugged.
“Maybe.
I know I was.”
“Okay.
Tell me the whole story.”
Shawn bit his lower lip,
and
glanced at
Riley
.
Despite what he’d said to Doug earlier, h
e didn’t want her to have to hear this
yet again
, relive how
she felt when she’d found out.
But she seemed to read his mind
“Go ahead,” she said gently.
“It’s okay
.”
He told the whole story,
what parts of it he rememb
e
red anyway, and leaned back, searching Doug’
s face for an encouraging sign.
There were none.
“
And there’s a lot of people who could testify that she was a
ll over him before that night,”
Br
endan spoke for the first time.
“Damn near everybody on
the tour could testify to that.
And then there was the strip poker thing.”
Doug perked up.
“What strip poker thing?”
Brendan t
old that story and Doug nodded.
He’d been taking notes the whole time,
but now was writing furiously.
“I’ll need the names o
f whomever was there that night.
For the card game.
As well as
people who worked on the tour.
I need the name of
any places
you were in with her bef
ore you went back to the hotel.
Any other detail you think might be helpful.”
“I can give you all that,”
Brendan
said.
Riley stood abruptly, releasing his hand
.
“
I
have to make some phone calls.
Is there a room I can use?”
Doug buzzed his secretary who came and u
shered Riley out of the office. Shawn watched her leave.
She wasn’t registering
too much of a reaction so far.
But maybe that was because, like him, she coul
dn’t even believe it was real.
Instead of going home tonight, he was going to
be spending the night in jail.
If he’d known it was going to turn into anything even resembling this, he would have said a lot worse to Keisha when he had the chance.
“So how can we make this go away?” Shawn asked now.
Doug’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I mean, before we flew down here, me and Brendan were thinking of
getting her not to press charges by
offering her . . .”
Doug held up a hand.
“Ther
e’s two things wrong with that.
Well, more than two but h
ere’s a couple to think about:
one, it would be illegal—
i
t’s called ‘bribing a witness’.
And two, it wouldn’t
necessarily
make the case go away.
The
DA has the discretion now about whether or not to proceed.”
“And it’s public now, anyway,” Brendan added.
Shaw
n sighed.
“Yeah, you’re right.
I don’t know, I was just thinking that . . .”
“The best thing to do i
s work the process,” Doug said.
“We’ll cooperate, and hopefully the witnesses will pan out so that by Christmas this’ll be a thing of the past.”
“Christmas?” Sh
awn leaned forward in his seat.
“That’s
a couple
months off.”
Doug shrugged.
“The wheels of justice can turn very slowly.”
Shawn shoo
k his head.
“That bitch, man
. If I could just . .
.”
“Get all of that out of your
system right now,” Doug warned.
“I don’t want anyone showing up in front of
a
grand jury saying you threatened her.”
“Will she be there?
At the grand jury?”
Doug nodded.
“She’s the complaining witness.”
“So choking the shit out of her is out of the question?” Shawn said wryly.
Brendan laughed but Doug did not.
“Shawn, you have to take this
very, very
seriously,”
he said.
“Innocence is no guarantee that you’ll get off.”
Those words were enough to
stop
cold in its tracks
any sense of humor he might have had about the situation.
From Doug’s
office, they went to Brendan’s.
They didn’t know if there would be press at the condo, and Shawn needed a few hou
rs to prepare to get locked up.
It was funny how
he w
as going to wind up behind bars—another brother in trouble—
even though he had more money and more opportunitie
s to avoid that fate than most.
But this was no time for self-pity and truth be told, the enemy in his case
was
himself.
There were
twenty-seven
messages on Brendan’s
voicemail
.
The news had hit MTV and
Arista
wa
s justifiably upset that they’
d hear
d
about it
along
with the rest of the world.
Shawn ducked
into the bedroom
to let Brendan return the calls
, pulling Riley with him
. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, neither of them
speaking
for a minute or two.
“You
okay
?” he asked her finally.
“Am
I
okay
?” she said.
“What about you
?
”
He
would have accepted
a lecture if she’d given him one
.
Tears, screaming.
Anything.
After all, his own stupidity
had gotten him here
.
Had
gotten
them
here
.
Now she was
in the position of having to explain
to her friends and family and co-workers how it happened that her husband was being charged with rape.
Rape
.