DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (39 page)

“Okay,” Daniel said and buzzed off.

He continued reading through his projection
papers while he awaited Nikki’s arrival.
 
It was only one in the afternoon but it had already been a hectic
day.
 
He had three different meetings,
all intense, including one with Michael Fastower, and he had a working lunch
with Nikki’s attorney, Lewis Hirsch.
 
And
he had yet another meeting in a few.
 
But
despite his busy schedule, he was pleased at the prospect of seeing Nikki.
 
She was out of the doldrums now and was
actively seeking to clear her name.
 
She
was in high spirits.
 
Which meant he was
too.

“Hey, Daniel,” she said jovially as she and
Val entered the office.

Daniel smiled and leaned back when he saw
her, and when she arrived at his side behind his desk, he lifted his mouth to
hers.
 
They kissed a kiss that Nikki
assumed would be a peck.
 
But Daniel, to
her delight, extended it.
 
He placed
 
his hand beneath her chin and kissed her far
more passionately than a hello usually required.
 
But Nikki wasn’t complaining.
 
She was inwardly thrilled.

Val sat down in front of the desk and wasn’t
complaining either.
 
He was outwardly
thrilled.
 
Ever since Nikki’s arrest,
Daniel’s attentiveness to Nikki heightened.
 
He’d always loved her.
 
There was
no doubt in Val’s mind about that.
 
But
after her arrest, his love went virile.
 
He was proclaiming that love as if he, not Nikki anymore, was the needy
one now.

As Daniel’s lips continued to attack Nikki’s
as if they were the only people in the room, Val wondered if Nikki’s arrest and
the way she initially handled that arrest, where she pretty much shut him out,
made Daniel realize just how easily he could lose Nikki.
 
For four years he’d been taking her presence
in his life for granted, if you asked Val.
 
Then Nikki’s freedom is threatened and Daniel finally woke the hell
up.
 
Val was pleased.
 
Not just for Nikki’s love life, but for the
fact that if he was already convinced that Daniel would move mountains to
exonerate Nikki, he was doubly convinced now.

When they stopped kissing, Daniel placed his
hand around Nikki’s waist.
 
She glanced
down.
 
Just as she suspected, he was
aroused.

“You’re okay?” he asked her, looking into her
eyes the way a doctor would, as if in those eyes he would know the true answer.

“I am,” she said.
 
And she was.
 
Her prayers to God and Daniel’s love for her kept her going.
 
Somehow she knew everything was going to be alright.
 
She was more than okay.

“Hello, Daniel,” Val said, wondering if he
Daniel could tear his eyes away from Nikki long enough to notice the other
human in the room.

Daniel smiled and looked at Val.
 
“Hello, Valton.
 
How are you, Valton?”

Val smiled.
 
“Not as good as you,” he said to laughter from Daniel.
 
“But I’m okay.”

Nikki left Daniel’s side and began walking
around to the front of his desk.

“You’ve been taking care of Nikki for me?”

Val snorted.
 
“Or the other way around, yes, sir.”

“The other way around, Val?” Nikki asked as
she sat in the chair beside him.
 
“What’s
that supposed to mean?”

Val continued to look at Daniel.
 
“This girl of yours is a mess, that’s what it
means, Mr. Crane.”

“Mr. Crane?” Nikki said with a smile.
 
“Since when is he Mr. Crane?”

“She thinks she can boss me around, is what
she thinks, and her every waking hour is spent on trying to do just that.
 
So please tell her to give it a rest.”

Daniel was loving it.
 
“Give it a rest, Nikki,” he said.

“I’ll give it a rest, all right,” Nikki said,
staring at Val with a smile on her face.
          

“So how have you been, Val?” Daniel asked
him.

“He’s been just fine,” Nikki said as she
turned her attention back to Daniel.
 
“He’s been getting on my last nerve, but he’s fine.”

“Very funny,” Val said.
 
“The lady has jokes.”

Daniel leaned back and looked at the lady
over his reading glasses.
 
She was in a
pair of black jeans and a plain green T-shirt with one of those thin, army
jackets covering her.
 
Just seeing her
made his heart squeeze with pride.
 
She
was handling her situation like a real trouper, compared to how she first
handled it.
 
But he could also tell she
had something unsettling on her mind.

“Tell me,” he said to her.

She thought about it, as if she was
attempting to figure out how to say it.
 
Then she decided to just say it.
 
“Melanie Chandler,” she said to him.

Daniel continued to stare at her.
 
“What about Mel?”

“I think your investigators should have
investigated her.”

Daniel hesitated.
 
“You think so?”

“Yes, I do.
 
And it’s not about me being jealous of her or anything like that.
 
I just realized that all of our troubles
seemed to start when she entered your life.”

Daniel nodded his head.
 
“Very good,” he said.

Now Val was looking at him too.
 
“What do you mean?” he asked.
 
“You knew that too?”

“I did.”

Nikki was floored.
 
“You mean you had her investigated already?”

“I investigated her,” Daniel said.

“You?” Nikki asked, surprised.

“Yes, me.
 
Somebody do something like that to you, Nikki, that means every
motherfucker who’s had anything to do with you or me will be investigated.
 
Nobody’s off limits.”

Nikki wanted to joke, did that include Val,
but she couldn’t.
 
She was too
stunned.
 
“So you think she’s involved?”
she asked Daniel.

Daniel removed his reading glasses and threw
them on his desk.
 
He ran both hands over
his face several times.
 
Then he looked
at Nikki.
 
“Yes.”

Nikki looked at Val.
 
“Have mercy,” Val said.

Then Nikki looked back at Daniel.
 
“So what did you find out?” she asked Daniel.

Daniel removed his feet from his desk,
unlocked his desk’s middle drawer, and pulled out a thin manila envelope and
handed it to Nikki.
 
“Take a look,” he
said.

Nikki opened the envelope quickly, her heart
racing with anticipation.
 
Val leaned
over and looked at the papers she pulled out too, and they scoured through
them.
 
Daniel was studying her while she
studied those papers, wondering if she was truly paying attention.

Then she finally looked up at him.
 
“There’s nothing here, Daniel, what’s
this?
 
All this is talking about is basic
stuff, where she was born, where she went to school, her job history.”

 
“There’s a lot there, Nikki.
 
You’re overlooking it.”

“I’m not overlooking anything.
 
I’m a reporter, I know how to scour over
documents.”

“And she ain’t lying.
 

“Well she’s not scouring over that,” Daniel
said.
 
He leaned forward, his elbows on
his desk.
 
“Where did she grow up?”

Nikki looked at the papers again.
 
“She was born in Chicago.”

“I didn’t ask you where was she born.
 
I asked you where did she grow up?”

“You didn’t read that part?” Val asked just
to needle Nikki a little.

But Nikki was absorbed in the task in front
of her.
 
She was looking over the
documents again.
 
“Oh,” she finally said,
and then she looked at Daniel.
 
“She grew
up in Philadelphia.”

“Philadelphia?” Val asked.
 
“Isn’t that where you’re from, Daniel?”

“One in the same,” Daniel said.
 
“She worked in the business community while
her older brother, Hines Baker, worked in the streets.
 
My first year as a criminal court judge, he came
before me.”

Nikki looked at the papers.
 

“You didn’t look at that either?”
 
Val asked, this time surprised that she had
missed that one.
 
Nikki looked back up at
Daniel.

“How did you know he was Mel’s brother,”
Nikki asked, “if his last name was Baker?”

“I reviewed every case I ever tried and I
reviewed each one in detail, including the witness lists and the relationship
the witnesses had to the defendants.”

“In case the relative is seeking revenge
against you?” Nikki asked.

“That’s right,” Daniel responded.
 
“When I saw Melanie Chandler, sister of the
defendant, on his witness list, Hines Baker definitely got my attention.
 
I sentenced him to twenty years in prison.”

“Wow,” Val said.
 
“On what charge?”

“Drug trafficking,” Daniel said, and Val
looked at Nikki.
 
But Nikki was staring
at Daniel.

“Drug trafficking?” she asked.
 
“The same thing I’ve been accused of.”

“Right,” Daniel said.

“What drug?” Nikki asked.
 
“Cocaine?”

Daniel nodded.
 
“Cocaine,” he said.

Val smiled, but Nikki sat back in her
chair.
 
For the first time since her
arrest, she felt that they were finally getting some traction.
 
But she didn’t want to celebrate too
soon.
 
“But that was so long ago,” she
said.
 
“You haven’t been a judge in
years.
 
Why would Melanie suddenly want
to get revenge on you?”

Daniel understood what she was asking.
 
“I checked that too,” he said.
 
“Hines Baker was killed in prison about a
month before Melanie introduced herself to me at Todd Bainbridge’s party.”

“Wow,” Val said again. “So the bitch was
bereaved?”

But Nikki was still in deep thought.
 
And her eyes couldn’t shield her
puzzlement.
 

“What is it, Nikki?” Daniel asked.

“If it’s revenge she wanted against you, what
was her plan?
 
I don’t get it.”

“I went far back into Mel’s family background
also.
 
There was nothing much there,
until I came across the fact that her father had a daughter from a previous
marriage.”

“So you investigated her half-sister too?”
Val asked, amazed that Daniel had done all of this.

“I did,” Daniel said.

“When did you have time to do all of this?”
Val asked him.

“I started looking over my cases within a day
of Nikki’s arrest.
 
I didn’t find the
Melanie connection until a couple days ago.
 
Then I focused exclusively on her case.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Val wanted to know.

“Because I wanted you and Nikki to keep your
focus on her enemies list.
 
If Melanie’s
connection didn’t pan out, I didn’t want us to have to reconfigure. I wanted to
already be there.”

“What did you find out about her
half-sister?” Nikki asked.
 
She was now
sitting on the edge of her seat.

“I found out that she once accused a man of
rape.
 
They had his semen inside of her,
they seemed to have had the young man dead to rights.
 
But it was concluded to have been consensual
sex because the young lady didn’t cry rape after she left his apartment, nor
did she mention any such matter to friends or foe.
 
She could have very well been raped, but it
was her word against his.
 
And because
his family was of some esteem in town, she wasn’t believed.”

Val knew that song all too well.
 
“He was rich and she was poor,” he said.

“Something like that, yes,” Daniel said.
 
“I don’t remember the exact economic
disparity between the accused and the accuser, but it’s in those documents.”

But Nikki and Val, being the eager beaver
young people that they were, had already discarded those documents.
 
They preferred to hear it straight from
Daniel.

But Nikki still had her misgivings.
 
She still wasn’t wholly convinced.
 
“The thing is,” she said, “I still don’t see
what her half-sister crying rape has to do with what Melanie did to me,” she
said.

“I think you were plan B,” Daniel said.
 
“I think she had every intention of getting
me either inside of her apartment, which didn’t happen, or inside of some hotel
room, which did, and seduce me.
 
She had
plans to put it on me so good that I wouldn’t even use a condom.”
 
Daniel stretched his eyebrows at that.
 
He’d had sex with only one woman in four
years, and that woman was Nikki.
 
The
idea that he would not only cheat on her, but expose her to disease by not
using a condom if he did, was abhorrent to him.

“But unlike her half-sister,” he continued,
“she wasn’t going to wait to cry rape.
 
They weren’t going to use that against her.
 
What I believe is that she was going to flee
from that hotel room crying it.
 
She was
going to shout it from the rooftops if she had to.

“That makes sense,” Val said, nodding his
head.
 
“You used to be a judge. She knew
she was going to have an uphill battle if it was her word against yours.
 
But her actions against your words might do
it.”

“That’s the conclusion I’ve reached too,”
Daniel said, nodding too.

But Nikki, it seemed to him, was still
skeptical.
 
“What is it, babe?” he asked
her.

“So her plan at seduction didn’t work, I get
that part.
 
But if she wanted revenge on
you, I still don’t see how planning drugs on me would harm you.”

But Val saw it.
 
“Because she knew,” he said.

Nikki looked at Val.
 
“Because she knew what?”

Val looked at Daniel, which caused Nikki to
look at Daniel too.

“Because she knew,” he said, “that the way to
hurt me, is to hurt you.”

Nikki’s throat constricted.
 
No better compliment could have ever been
paid to her.
 
And then she smiled.
 
She was onboard too now.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked him.

“I’ve turned everything over to Camp Gates
and his investigators.
 
They’ve already
found one connection that could be very helpful.”

“What?” Nikki asked him, her eyes riveted on
his.

“Hines Baker, during his trial, would never
reveal his supplier.
 
He was working for
somebody, but he would never snitch.
 
But
apparently the prosecution didn’t try very hard to find him, either, because my
investigators found him in all of a day.”

“Damn,” Val said.

“Who is he?” Nikki asked.

“Edgar Lassiter.
 
A hood from way back.
 
Mel had mentioned an Edgar once, as I
recalled, and my Camp Gates has confirmed it too.
 
Edgar, it seems, is Mel’s boyfriend.”

Nikki smiled.
 
“And he’s a drug dealer?”

“He deals mainly in crack cocaine, but he
handles the powdered too.
 
Gates and his
men are leaning on him as we speak.”

“Praise the Lord,” Nikki said.
 
“Finally we’re getting somewhere!”

Daniel smiled as his desk intercom
buzzed.
 
“Yes?” he asked as he answered.

“Your one-thirty has arrived, sir,” the
female’s voice said.

“Okay,” Daniel said and released the buzz.

Nikki and Val stood up.
 
“Your one-thirty is early,” she said.

“They usually are,” he replied.

Then she walked around the desk, smiling
grandly, and Daniel stood as she came.
 
He swept her into his arms and, once again, kissed her passionately.

When they stopped and Nikki began walking
toward the door, Val could see Daniel’s eyes following her.
 
Her ass specifically.
 
He smiled.
 
“See you around, Daniel,” he said, feeling hopeful himself.

“Take care,” Daniel said.
 
“And Nikki,” he added and Nikki turned
around.
 
“Come over to the house
tonight,” he said.

She looked at him, a smile still on her
face.
 
“And what’s wrong with you coming
over to my house?” she asked.

“One issue,” he said.
 
“You seem to have a particular houseguest who
has particularly good hearing.”

Val laughed.
 
Nikki shook her head, and then laughed too.
 
“I’ll be there,” she said, as she left.