CHAPTER ELEVEN
After Vince slammed the front passenger door and walked around and got in on the driver side, closing the door behind him, he turned to Ricki. “I’m going to drop you off at a hotel, and then I’m heading home.”
Ricki was scared to be left alone in that town. She didn’t realize how much it would affect her to be back there after all those years until she got there. And a hotel? “I can’t afford to stay at a hotel.”
“Where did you plan to stay?” he asked her. “Did you not think this trip out at all?”
“No. I didn’t have time. I got the call and I hit the road. I wanted to get here before that bail hearing.”
“All of that for a drug addict and a prostitute like your sister? You just dropped everything and went running? I wouldn’t have wasted my time if I knew she was who you were doing all this running for.”
“I told you to just leave,” she said, although her heart wasn’t in it. He could tell she was hurt by his dismissive attitude.
And she was. But she didn’t try to defend her sister. Because her sister was, in fact, an addict. She was a prostitute too. Those things weren’t lies. And besides, if it wasn’t for him, she would have missed that hearing altogether.
Vince knew he was hard on her. But she had to get real about her sister’s situation. That woman-child was going down. There was no doubt in his mind about that. “Do you have anywhere else you can stay?” he asked her. “Your folks maybe?”
“No,” she said without hesitation. “There’s nowhere else. There’s no one else.” Then she looked at him.
When she looked at him with what he viewed as those soulful, big brown eyes, he knew he couldn’t just abandon her without assisting her. He pressed the Start button. Then he pressed his microphone icon. “Alexa, call my secretary,” he ordered.
“Calling Penelope Hutchinson of Fontaine and Bachman, Incorporated.”
Ricki assumed that was his lobbying firm, although she remembered he said he had a public relations firm too. Or was lobbying and public relations the same thing? She wasn’t sure.
“This is the office of Vincent Fontaine. How may I direct your call?”
“It’s me, Pen.”
“I wasn’t sure if it was you, sir. Your wife also has--”
“My ex-wife,” he quickly corrected her.
“Excuse me, sir. Your ex-wife has your name on her phone service as well. Your name appears when she phones. I wasn’t sure.”
Ricki could tell Vince wasn’t aware of it, and he didn’t like it. “I’ll rectify that.”
“How can I help you, sir?”
“I need you to contact my car service and have them find a tow truck. Have them pick up a broken down--” He looked at Ricki.
“Mustang GX,” she said.
“An old Mustang GX. It’s in the parking lot of the Race Grove diner that’s located off the next exit north of Stamford.”
“Connecticut?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you want the tow truck to take it, sir?”
“Is there a Ford dealership in Milton, Rasheda?”
She nodded. “Yes sir,” she said.
Vince almost corrected her. Why was she suddenly calling him sir? Because his secretary was? Was she suddenly waking up to the fact that he was no bum like she seemed to think? But he ignored it. “Take it to the Ford dealership in Milton, Connecticut and I’ll pay the repair costs.”
“Who should they contact once the work is completed, sir?”
“You. And then you contact me.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Diane said. Then Vince ended the call.
Relief washed over Ricki to know that she would have transportation back to Brooklyn. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll pay you back every dime you spend once I get back to work and earn some money.”
Vince didn’t say no worries, or never mind the way she expected him to say. And she appreciated that.
“Now where’s the best hotel in this town?”
“But I told you I can’t afford to pay a hotel bill.”
“I’m going to pay the hotel bill for as long as you wish to stay here,” Vince said. “Now where is it?”
“We have a motel right here in downtown.”
“I didn’t ask you about a motel. Where’s the best you got?”
“It’s on the edge of town. You take a left and keep going straight for a couple miles until the stop sign. Then you take another left.”
Vince pulled out of the courthouse parking lot and made a left. Then they were on their way.
Ricki felt so disconcerted that she leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her weary eyes. “Some birthday,” she muttered beneath her breath.
But Vince glanced over at her. He heard her. “Whose birthday? Erica’s?”
Ricki looked over at him in shock. She didn’t think there was any way he could have heard her. But he did. “Ah no,” she said, still caught off guard. “It’s not Erica’s birthday.”
“Then whose birthday were you referencing?” When she didn’t respond, his eyebrows raised. “Yours? Today is your birthday, Rasheda?”
Ricki nodded. “Yep.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
That sounded foolish to Ricki. “Who was I gonna say it to? Nobody cares.”
Vince almost blurted out I do, but he managed to stop himself. But he kept glancing at her, as if the fact that today was her birthday was worrisome to him.
Then he let his feelings be known. “Where are your friends, Rasheda? And why can’t you go home to your family?”
“They don’t want me. Okay? They disowned me years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because I went my own way. I did my own thing. I thought for myself.”
Vince had a feeling there was far more to that story than that, but he didn’t pursue it. “And your friends? Where are they?”
Ricki hated to admit it. “I don’t have any.”
“Why not?”
“I work all the time, okay? Why you all on my case like this?”
“Because it’s not healthy, young lady. No friends. No family. That’s not healthy at all.”
But there was nothing to be done about it now, and they both knew it. They rode in silence.
Then Vince, who couldn’t stop thinking about Ricki, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.
He then pulled out a thick wad of one-hundred-dollar bills.
“That’s at least a couple thousand dollars,” he said to her as he sat the money on the console and began putting his wallet back into his back pocket.
Then he reached the money out to her. “Take it.”
She took it, but with confusion on her face. “Two thousand dollars? What is it for?”
“They have phone charging ports in hotel rooms. Once you get your phone charged, call me and I’ll Zelle you more.”
She was blown away by his kindness. “But what is it for?”
“Your birthday, Rasheda. It’s for your birthday. Happy birthday.”
Ricki stared at him as if she couldn’t believe it. Then tears began to well-up in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her sincerely.
It took her a moment to compose herself, and then she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand.
“What is it?”
“Nobody had ever given me a birthday gift before.”
Vince frowned. “Not even your parents?”
“If we were good, we got a gift. But according to them, I never was. So I never got one.”
“What about your boyfriends? A young lady like you certainly had boyfriends in your life. Or at least have one now.”
“I had’em alright,” she said. Odd still was the sense of relief Vince felt when she used the past tense. “But they never stuck around long enough to be that serious.”
“And why not?” he asked her.
“They said I was too mean.”
That was plausible to Vince. But was it to her? “Were you?” he asked her.
“If the definition of mean is that I didn’t put up with their bullshit, then yes. I was very mean.” Then she caught herself. “Excuse my French.”
“Profanity is not French,” said Vince. “But you’re excused.”
Ricki looked at him with all sincerity. “Thank you so much for this gift,” she said, “but I’m not worried about myself. I can take care of myself. I’m worried about my sister.”
The way she was looking at him with those big browns melted him again.
“I know this is asking a lot,” she continued, “but is there any way you can help my sister instead of me?”
“You mean bail her out?”
Ricki wanted to say and get her a great lawyer too, but she knew that was impossible. Great lawyers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe millions before it was all said and done. She wouldn’t go there.
Besides, Erica’s bail would be ten percent non-refundable.
That would be forty thousand dollars! That meant she would have to pay him back all of that money.
It was hopeless either way. “Yes,” she said.
“If you can bail her out, I’ll work out a repayment plan beginning with this birthday money. If you would bail her out.”
Vince exhaled. It was obvious he had been thinking about it before their conversation. “I’m disinclined to do that,” he said honestly.
Which shocked Ricki because she knew he could do it. “Why wouldn’t you help her? I’ll get on a payment plan and pay you back. It’ll take a long time, and I know that’s not good, but you’ll get every dime back. Why won’t you help her? You’re willing to help me.”
“I’ve taken leave of my senses and gone against everything I normally am to help you. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to take leave of my senses to help anybody else.”
Ricki found that to be a backhanded compliment. But she held her peace. This man was all she had.
“What I’m doing for you hasn’t anything to do with that sister of yours,” Vince continued. “That prosecutor said she was an addict and a prostitute. Is that true?”
Ricki didn’t want to admit it. “Sometimes.”
“Didn’t I tell you about fantasy living? Now was that prosecutor telling the truth?”
Ricki exhaled. “I told you she has issues. Yes.”
“Then she’s better off locked up right now than in the streets. She’ll only give the prosecution more ammunition to bury her with if she was in those streets doing everything she’s big enough to get into. So getting her out is not an option. Forget that.”
He could tell Ricki was distraught, but that was too bad. She was a helper, but there was just so much help you could give a druggie and a whore. “Put that money away,” he said to Ricki as he stopped at the stop sign, and then turned left on a long road to the edge of town.
The silence from Ricki as she put the money in her purse was strained.
He glanced over at her and could see her distress.
Why it bothered him so much was concerning.
He was known the world over as a very tough guy who couldn’t care less about anybody but himself.
That was his reputation everywhere. It was how he viewed himself as well.
But that didn’t explain why this particular person was upending all of what he knew himself to be.
“If she didn’t do it,” he said to her in encouragement, “she’ll be okay. ”
“With a public defender who’s already acting like she’s guilty?”
“Maybe because she is,” said Vince as he looked over at her again. “Ever thought about that, Rasheda?”
Ricki’s eyes grew so large that it concerned Vince. Then he realized she was looking, not at him, but beyond him. “Watch out!” she cried out as a pickup truck had crossed the medium and was heading straight for Vince’s Bentley.
Before Vince even saw it, Ricki grabbed the steering wheel and flung it toward the side of the road and Vince, now seeing what Ricki was seeing, floored the gas petal and took control of the steering wheel as the truck continued to speed across that medium toward them.
But Ricki’s fast thinking by grabbing the steering wheel, and Vince’s subsequent moves, caused the truck to miss hitting them by inches.
The Bentley sped through the gravel on the side of the road, coughing it up, and then rammed into bushes before Vince slammed on brakes.
He looked at Ricki. “Are you okay?”
Ricki nodded. “I’m fine. You?”
“I’m okay,” Vince said as he looked through his rearview at that pickup truck.
Ricki turned around and looked through the back window. “Stupid-ass drunk driver!” she yelled out as that truck seemed to swerve wildly across the road trying to get away, and then it course-corrected and kept on going. “They oughta start putting those drunk-ass drivers under the jail!”
But Vince wasn’t so certain it was a drunk driver at all.
His public relations firm dealt with a lot of unsavory characters attempting to get their reputations back on track, and they would do whatever it took to make it happen.
That pickup truck speeding toward them as if they were in his crosshairs gave him those kind of vibes.
Especially by the way that truck headed straight for his Bentley.
It felt targeted to him. As if somebody in that town knew Ricki was back in town and was the kind of person that would scream from the raptors that her sister was innocent, and would do whatever it took to clear her sister’s name.
And they didn’t like it. It could be a family member of that dead doctor who wanted Ricki’s sister to fry.
Or it could be the real person that caused that doctor to be dead and didn’t want Ricki to expose them.
But either way, Vince thought, it didn’t look good for Ricki.
He backed out of the bushes, concerned not at all that his very expensive automobile probably incurred some significant scratches, as he got back on the road and headed for the hotel.
During the drive, not a word was spoken between them.