Fairplay, Denver Cereal Volume 6 (24 page)

“
Wha… what did you do?”
The words tumbled out of his mouth. They were the first heart
honest words he’d spoken in a very long time. His stomach wrenched
at the sound of them.

“
Jill asked for my Gran’s
house as her wedding present,” Tanesha said. “Jacob Marlowe bought
it. We can live there until Gran dies. He’s helping us fix up the
place. We spent the summer redoing the yard. You should have seen
crazy Aunt Phy planting flowers in her big hat and wild house
dress. What a sight.”

“
I bet.”

“
Now it’s almost as nice
as the fixed up places on our block. Jacob’s going to paint the
house this fall. Gran’s picked the colors to match the
neighbors.”

“
J-Jill knows how to stand
up for you in hard times,” Jeraine nodded and looked
down.

“
Why can’t you?” Tanesha
whispered.

“
I don’t know.” Jeraine
looked down. His stomach heaved again. He held his breath for a
moment to see if the world might end, if she’d leave, but her feet
didn’t move. She was still there. He let out his breath. “All I
ever wanted was to impress you.”

His words were so quiet that Tanesha wasn’t
sure she’d heard them correctly.

“
Impress me? What the hell
are you talking about? I’m nothing.”

“
You’re everything. Your
mother is a crack ‘ho… an addict and look at all you’ve done in
your life. You have great friends. You’re so beautiful, so smart
and so, so strong. Fierce. You’re the most amazing human being I’ve
ever met.”

“
Me?”

His head moved in a nod.

“
I was in prison in St.
Louis,” Jeraine said. “After that girl… died. They held me. There
wasn’t anything anyone could do to get me out. No amount of money,
big money lawyers, record company pull, nothing was going to get me
out of that prison. In fact, the judge said that. The black judge
said I was just the kind of thug who made all black men look bad.
They kept me in isolation because of my fame. A white gang was
going to kill me because I supposedly killed a white woman. I was
alone almost twenty-four hours a day.

“
I paced the cell like a
caged animal. I made deals with God. I promised myself if I ever
got out, I’d make this right with you. But… I couldn’t get my black
ass out of prison.”

Tanesha’s hand went to her heart.

“
I realize, kneeling here,
that I didn’t do half of what I promised God I would do,” Jeraine
said. “If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one I break my
promises to.”

“
How did you get
out?”

“
Seth. He looked into the
whole mess. The first real investigation anybody did,” Jeraine
said. “After the first week, he came to see me every day until I
was released. We talked. I always thought him of as my Dad’s honky
cop friend who played music on the side. But he’s been on the road
since he was ten years old. He was the only person I’d ever talked
to who understood what it was like for me.”

“
You mean the money and
the girls?”

“
No, everyone says that,”
Jeraine dared to look at her for the first time. “How can it be
hard for you, It? You gots everything. Well, what I
gots
is a whole
lots
of
nothing.”

“
What do you mean by
that?” Tanesha took a step toward him.

“
You ever go to McDonald’s
when you’ve just cashed your check and you’re hungry?”

“
Sure.”

“
How do you feel when
you’re done stuffing yourself?”

“
Sick and
hungry.”

“
That’s how I felt every
single day.” Jeraine dropped his head to look at the ground. “Mom’s
pissed at me; she won’t speak to me even when we’re in the same
room. She didn’t raise me to do all those women, all those drugs,
all that booze, all this crazy crap. My parents have been married
almost forty years. I used to think my Dad was stupid for giving up
the life to come home and live with Mom. But sitting in that cell?
All I wanted was to spend forty years with you, to be the man you
once thought I’d be.

“
But I’ve stuffed myself
so full of all that crap that I
am
that crap,” Jeraine said. “You are what you eat.
That’s what Seth told me. I spent so much time around blood suckers
eating up their false adoration, I become false. The only way a man
can become true and healthy is if he knows his flaws and holds them
close to him. Seth said that too. And what flaws does Mr. It
have?”

For once, Tanesha didn’t know what to
say.

“
I’m flawed Tanesha,”
Jeraine said. “Badly, deeply flawed. And I have a long way to go. A
long way. But I love you. I always have. I thought all of this
would impress you. But plastic crap only impresses plastic people.
Seth says that and he’s right. He’s right about
everything.”

Tanesha tilted his head up so she could see
his face. His face was wet with tears. She touched his cheek. These
weren’t tears of sorrow, but tears of relief for finally speaking
his truth.

“
I won’t ask you to marry
me again,” Jeraine said. “How about if I make you breakfast? Will
you stay for breakfast? I took cooking classes at the Institute of
Culinary Education in New York.”

Tanesha scrunched her face up.

“
Yeah,” Jeraine said. “I
can cook a lot of disgusting food.”

“
Do you have any food
here?” Tanesha asked.

“
I don’t know,” Jeraine
jogged into the kitchen.

“
You don’t know?” Tanesha
asked.

“
Not ‘til I look,” he
yelled. He stuck his head into the hall to say, “Nope, no
food.”

“
Get dressed,” Tanesha
said. “Gran will be up in a few minutes. You want to eat real food?
Be real people? You should eat my Gran’s breakfast. See how you
feel. She’ll serve it to you with a slab of humble pie, but you
deserve it.”

Smiling, Jeraine jogged back to his room to
change. When he came out in jeans and a T-shirt, she shook her
head.

“
Uh huh, you’re going
to
my
Gran’s
house,” Tanesha said. “You better get dressed.”

Shaking his head, Jeraine went back to his
bedroom. He came out in a blue suit, shirt and tie. Tanesha
nodded.

“
I’m not driving in your
pimp mobile,” Tanesha said.

“
How are we going to get
there?” he asked.

“
I’ll drive,” Tanesha
said. Catching his look, Tanesha added, “My junker is good enough
for you and your fancy suit.”

Smiling at her back, he followed her into
his private elevator. When they reached the garage, he felt a flood
of panic.

“
You will marry me though?
Right?”

“
Let’s just start with
seeing Gran again. You know she’s going to want us to go to her
church.”

Before she left the elevator, she kissed
him. She hadn’t intended to, but she kissed him. His eyes looked
over her face and he kissed her.

“
Come on,” she
said.

She took his hand and led him to her
car.

~~~~~~~~

Saturday afternoon—1:45 P.M. MDT

“
Ready?” Jacob asked
Jill.

She glanced at him and turned back continued
staring at the building. They were sitting in her Lexus SUV outside
Blane’s doctor’s office on the Anschutz Medical Campus. Katy sat
behind them in her car seat turning the pages of a new picture
book.

“
What if…?”

“
We came to get answers to
any and all what ifs,” Jacob said.

“
How did you get him to
come in?”

“
He likes Blane and said
he’d do anything to help,” Jacob said. “We’re also major donors to
his foundation that provide transplants for people without
resources – kids, homeless people, foster care.”

“
We are?”

“
As of two hours ago,”
Jacob said.

Jill smiled.

“
Did Jeraine really spend
the day digging up the sewer line at Tanesha’s Gran’s
house?”

“
After escorting Tanesha’s
Gran to church, he sure did,” Jill laughed. “That’s where we went
before we came to get you. I had to take a picture of Mr. It in his
fancy suit up to his eyes in dirt.”

“
They know that’s kind of
what I do for a living?”

“
Oh trust me, Gran knows.
She wanted Jeraine to do it,” Jill smiled. “And he did without
question. He came inside, showered, and took them all to lunch.
He’s going to call you this afternoon to get the parts to repair
the sewer. Tanesha is beside herself.”

“
What about that doctor?”
Jacob asked. Their eyes turned to stare at the building again.
“Wasn’t she dating a doctor?”

“
Cam? You remember he
showed up the night Saint Jude… died?”

“
I remember.”

“
He was looking for
Tanesha to tell her that he had been relocated,” Jill said. “Turns
out he’s in Witness Protection. That was the answer to all the Cam
mysteries. The U.S. Marshals came and took him away that night.
Tanesha hasn’t heard from him since.”

“
That’s weird,” Jacob
said.

They continued to stare at the building.

“
I thought we were going
inside,” Katy said.

Jacob took Jill’s hand and kissed the spot
on her hand next to her thumb.

“
Ready?” she
asked.

He nodded. They got out of the SUV. With
Katy between them, Jacob and Jill went inside.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED and SEVENTY-ONE

Father

Saturday afternoon—2:15 P.M. MDT

Feeling tired but proud, Jeraine sipped his
milk shake and turned onto Curtis Street. He smiled. From a block
away, he could see the pile of dirt he’d moved that morning.

And then, a tall muscular man stepped on top
of the pile of dirt, his pile of dirt, the pile of dirt he’d spent
most of the day creating.

“
Who’s that?” Jeraine
asked Tanesha.

From a block away, Jeraine saw the man
unbutton and take off his work shirt. His muscles popped under his
white tank top and his skin was so black it shone almost blue. When
the man turned to place his folded shirt on the porch, Jeraine got
a look at his face.

He knew exactly who was standing over his
trench.

Rodney-Smith.

Jeraine swallowed hard.

When he was three or four years old,
Rodney-Smith had been arrested for raping and murdering some white
girl downtown. Jeraine’s father was sure Rodney was innocent but no
one would listen. The police had no witnesses, no evidence,
nothing. That didn’t matter. Nor did the fact that Jeraine’s Mom
and Dad had taken a second mortgage out on their house to pay for
an attorney for him. Rodney-Smith had gone to prison for life.

And Jeraine had never heard the end of
it.

“
If this can happen to a
good man like Rodney-Smith, it can happen to any of you,” she’d
say. “They see your guilt all over your black skin.”

If there was one person
who’d made him into Mr. It, it was Rodney-Smith. Jeraine was
not
going to be like
Rodney-Smith. No sir. No way. He made sure he kept out of the sun
or used sun block to make sure his skin would never get so black.
He kept his women clean, happy, and dark. No white woman was going
to tell any tall tales on Jeraine. He had a posse of men who kept
his image and business clean.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he
remembered hearing that Rodney-Smith had been exonerated. He
couldn’t remember when he’d heard that. Didn’t matter. DNA evidence
proved that some psycho killed that white girl and a bunch of
others. At the time, he’d wondered if his Dad’s cop buddy Seth was
involved. But he didn’t think about it for very long. Someone
brought him a cocktail and the women were lining up to take a ride
in his bed.

Who cared what happened to his childhood
boogie man Rodney-Smith?

Jeraine pulled the car to the curb and
jumped out. He wasn’t afraid of the man. Not him. No way. Pulling
himself to his maximum height, he marched across the yard to where
the man stood. Rodney-Smith’s head turned at his approach.
Jeraine’s mind flooded with thoughts. He should say… He was going
to say…

When he got close to the man, he felt only
panic.

“
Did you dig this hole?”
Rodney-Smith asked.

“
What’s it to you?”
Jeraine asked.

Rodney-Smith’s eyebrows went up. Jeraine
heard a car door slam. Rodney-Smith’s eyes flicked toward the sound
before turning back to Jeraine.

“
Sure, I dug up the sewer
at my fiancé’s house,” Jeraine said. “A man’s got to take care of
his woman.”

Rodney-Smith’s eyes filled with
amusement.

“
You think that’s funny?”
Jeraine asked.

Rodney-Smith’s hand moved at lightning
speed. Jeraine flinched thinking the older man was going to hit
him. Rodney-Smith opened Jeraine’s right hand to reveal fresh
blisters. The older man shook his head and turned to look at the
hole again. Unsure of what to do, Jeraine looked in the hole too. A
truck with the radio blasting one of his songs pulled up to the
house. The music shut off with the low rumble of the truck.