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  “What’s going on?” he said with confusion. “Honey, what’re you doing outside at this hour?”

  “Bitches!” she shrieked. She pulled the release valve and blasted him with a heavy stream of water. “Your common ass always needed a bunch of bitches!” she screamed, spraying him with another deluge.

  Victoria bombarded her husband with vile epithets, “motherfuck” this and “motherfuck” that, as he cowered and shielded his face.

  “What in the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

  She dropped the metal hose and dashed into the house. Before he could catch her, Victoria dead-bolted the door. Marsh stood outside, leaning on the doorbell, hammering on the door with his fists, and calling her name.

  “Torie, please!” he cried.

  She finally relented. Marsh, soaked from head to toe, walked cautiously into the foyer.

  “Can we talk now?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said with a smirk.

  “I want to tell you everything.”

  “What’s left to say?” she said, screwing off her wedding set and chucking it at him.

  “Don’t do this,” he pleaded, extending his open palms.

  “You did this!” she said, jamming her finger in the air. “This is all on you!”

  Against his better judgment, Marsh followed his wife down the hallway and into the master bedroom.

  “Fuck this shit!” she screamed.

  A lead crystal lamp suddenly hit the bedroom wall and blew apart on impact. A barrage of nineteenth-century African wood-carved masks—trailed by a Bose Wave radio, two speakers, several hardback books, and a framed photograph of them that had been taken on their last anniversary vacation—swiftly followed.

  “Fuck this and fuck you!” Victoria shrieked again. “You don’t get to do this to me!”

  Marsh attempted the impossible, to explain it all away under the guise of a failing marriage. He murmured something that sounded like contrition but stumbled over his words.

  She exploded again.

  “Get out!” she shouted, hurling another round of books.

  Marsh rushed in and grabbed her up with both arms.

  “Let me go! Damn you, I said let me go!”

  “Settle down, baby,” Marsh said, his voice growing softer with humiliation as he released her.

  Victoria was crying now. A torrent of angry tears spilled down her cheeks. She went to the master closet and dragged an armload of his clothes, still on the hangers, out to the center of the bedroom floor.

  His shoulders slumped. “I needed somebody,” he said pensively. “She isn’t—” he started to say, before he caught himself.

  “She isn’t what?”

  Marsh didn’t respond.

  “Answer me! She isn’t what?”

  Marsh answered with more silence.

  “Get your shit and get out,” she said, jamming her finger toward the heap of clothes.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You must think I’m weak and dumb enough to let your sorry ass stay here.”

  “You’re launching the campaign in three days. How will that look?”

  “I don’t need you, Marsh. I swear I don’t.”

  “And that’s always been your problem. You don’t need anybody.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare put this off on me,” she said, hauling an oversized suitcase out of the closet. “You’re out here wining, dining, and screwing dime-store whores, and I am to blame for that? This bitch has got you feeling yourself, doesn’t she?”

  “I can’t tell you that she doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t lie like that.”

  Victoria dropped the luggage. She fell over the open suitcase, crumpled up, and sobbed.

  “Torie, baby, we have to work this thing out. I’ll end it, I swear,” he said, kneeling beside her. “I won’t leave you. I won’t leave our girls. I won’t leave this house.”

  Victoria raised her head and said, “Then, motherfucker, you better not sleep.”

  The package, now safely locked away, contained ten full-color photographs and a high-definition DVD that Victoria could not bring herself to watch. Her husband’s transgressions were painstakingly detailed in a three-page, time-stamped dossier that covered a week’s worth of his sins. A rendezvous in a hospital parking lot, another at the Buckhead Ritz-Carlton, and two more in a room she could not readily identify. A printout of his cell phone records revealed hundreds of calls and text messages, extending back over at least a year. Victoria was already drafting the divorce petition in her head.

  There had been other women, she knew, some before they married and at least one after. That was the “Atlanta Way,” she kept telling herself over the years as one girlfriend after another watched their husbands run off with a mistress. There had been marriage counseling and a teary reunion, and then the twins were born.

  She’d combed the pages for a mention of the woman’s name. Her face was hauntingly familiar, although Victoria could not immediately place where or if they had met. And then, as she waited for Marsh to come home, it dawned on her. Samantha Jones-Geidner, the thirtysomething reality television star and ex-wife of a record label executive, had been introduced to her by a mutual acquaintance at an Atlanta Medical Association reception two years ago. At the time, she was still married to Stony Geidner, a sixtysomething Jewish entertainment lawyer who invested his fortune on a stable of rap artists. Stony made no secret of his predilection for women of color, and Samantha was as black as she was beautiful.

  Victoria found Marsh in the kitchen, nursing his face with a bag of ice. There was a deep gash in his hairline.

  “I’m going to need some stitches.”

  “Samantha Geidner?”

  Marsh didn’t answer.

  “I don’t want you here tonight,” she said quietly.

  SIXTEEN

  “That was a mighty fine sermon you preached last Sunday, Reverend. I caught it online.”

  “I do appreciate that, Mr. Loudermilk, and I appreciate your invitation.”

  “No, please. Call me Virgil. And have a seat. Rest yourself.”

  The Reverend Dr. Rudolph Goodwin sat down in the black leather chair. He was an impressive creature by any measure, down to his tailored suit, silk socks, and platinum cuff links. The preacher was tall and lean, and Virgil marveled at his chiseled face. No flashy jewelry either, Virgil noticed, just a silver wedding band. Goodwin had a regal, statesmanlike air about him.

  “I hear you started your congregation in a school cafeteria. Five original members, right?”

  “Including my wife, yes.”

  “Like the Jackson Five.”

  Goodwin chuckled, though Virgil felt his reserve. The church boasted over twenty-five thousand members now, live-streamed three services every Sunday, and even had a weekly broadcast on a Christian television network. The plain truth was, Virgil knew near ’bout everything there was to know about the preacher and his humble beginnings. He’d asked J. T. King to develop a full dossier on the pastor, which made for good reading.

  Young Rudy Goodwin was raised in a second-floor, cold-water flat with no central heating, on land that later became the Georgia Dome. His daddy worked at Atlantic Steel for thirty years, making metal fencing and wiring for “Mr. Tom” Glenn, while his mama sold hot plates off the back porch at two dollars a whop to pick up the slack. Neither had ever owned a car or anything else, as far as King could discern. A lawyer by training, King was good about these things, in addition to helping to craft solid messaging.

  It all made for a splendid rags-to-riches story. A man of meager beginnings, the good reverend now tooled around town in a drop-top Bentley coupe and made use of a private jet. Still, there were problems to be worked out, King advised, though nothing scandalous that would result in unpleasant headlines. Yes, Goodwin was as perfect as his mama’s meat loaf. Virgil leaned in and eyed him like a pan of banana pudding fresh out of the oven.

&
nbsp; “There is nothing more important than having a family that supports you. I can promise you that,” Virgil said, his southern drawl more prominent now. “I like a self-made man. Reminds me of my father. I truly respect what you’ve built out there.”

  “We’ve got six campuses around the country, praise God.”

  “I picked up one of your books over the weekend. I’m only through a few chapters, but it’s off to a good start.”

  “I’ll have my secretary send you the others.”

  “Oh, when I said ‘picked up,’ I meant off my shelf. I have all eight of your books.”

  “I’m working on a new one now. We do our own publishing, and all the profits go to our family foundation.”

  “You don’t say?” Virgil said, already aware of the financial arrangements.

  “The proceeds fund our mission trips and college scholarships endowed in my wife’s name. She worked her way through Georgia Tech and graduated in three years, you know.”

  “So I’ve read,” Virgil said. “I’ll forgive her for not going to UGA. Y’all have quite a story.”

  This was their third meeting. The first was at City of Faith, in the pastor’s office, and though he was not usually prone to such things, Virgil had been downright mesmerized. The second was in Goodwin’s home, equally splendid and situated in a gated south Fulton County subdivision, where Virgil met his charming, dutiful wife, Esther, and their two teenaged sons, Rudolph, Jr., and Ephraim. Some rapper Goodwin called “T.I.” lived a few doors up, which meant next to nothing to Virgil.

  Now sitting in the Club at Chops, an ultraexclusive, member-only dining room on the lower level of one of the city’s premier steak houses, Virgil was sure he had his man. He’d decided on that during their second meeting, over tall sweaty glasses of sweet tea. Goodwin would be his pick, even before his brethren in the League had a chance to lay eyes on him. Try as he might to keep things hush-hush, word leaked out and raised the ire of Victoria Dobbs. He’d been advised, by those paid to look after such matters, that she was moving fast. Big-name consultants were hired out of Washington, and a new field director, recruited from the DNC, was already in place.

  His brother, Whit, objected to the latest salvo, but he knew as well as anybody what had to be done. Dobbs had to be stopped. Even so, Virgil hadn’t expected a sitting mayor to bash her husband over the head like that. A private detective provided a detailed report of the fisticuffs. The good doctor had four stitches and was now holed up in his cousin’s penthouse at the Atlantic off Seventeenth Street near the old steel mill, according to the latest dispatch.

  “I apologize for dragging you all the way out here, especially at this late hour. My wife has a houseful of guests, or I would’ve invited you over for a proper meal. She isn’t nearly as agreeable as your Esther, unfortunately.”

  “I am sure she is lovely,” Goodwin said. “The Good Lord doesn’t always give us what we want, but He gives us what we need.”

  “A lot of things describe my Libby Gail. ‘Lovely’ isn’t one of them. She gets downright ornery when I mess with her plans. She’d come in third runner-up to a bullfrog, if it came to a contest, so I hope you don’t mind the venue. A few of my colleagues wanted to meet you in person,” Virgil said. “I assured them that you were the right man for the Fifteenth District; however, it’s an expensive proposition, and we all want to make sure that we’re backing the right candidate.”

  “I value your consideration, Virgil. Losing Congressman Hawkins was tough on all of us.”

  “It was indeed, and I like your graciousness, seeing as how you and Hawkins got along like two polecats scrapping in the brush.”

  Goodwin raised a brow, smiling to hide his uneasiness, and said, “He was a good man.”

  “I suppose you want to ask me how I know that.”

  “It’s no secret that Hawkins asked a congressional committee to investigate my church. We welcomed that.”

  “That’s true enough, though I know it ran deeper than that,” Virgil said, sipping a glass of sparkling water. “I hope you don’t mind the vetting process. It ensures that we don’t encounter any surprises.”

  “No, no. I expected as much. Like you said, this is a big investment. Is it true that you backed Mayor Dobbs in her reelection?”

  “We don’t generally talk about whom we have and have not supported, Pastor. But, yes, Mayor Dobbs and I have long been friends. I knew her daddy, a fine man if ever there was one.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I have other interests,” Virgil said. “She does call you Reverend Cash Flow, you know.”

  “Cheap and petty.”

  “Dobbs can be petty, sure enough, but she doesn’t come cheap and neither do you.”

  “I am a good steward of my many blessings.”

  “Does that include that private jet?”

  “I’m not a pauper. I’m a preacher. I assure you that our books are in order. I do have to say that you have an impressive track record.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Getting Pfeiffer into the mayor’s office, for starters. You have to admit throwing your weight behind Boney Jeffries wasn’t exactly prudent, though.”

  “You can’t win every day. But, like I said, we don’t generally discuss what or whom we decide to support. Democratic voters tend to get their tail feathers in a tangle when Republicans get involved in their affairs. I’ll be straight with you. We never meant for Boney to win. His problem was that he talked too much and couldn’t control his zipper. And, well, Pfeiffer turned out to be a crook, as we all know.”

  “So why back him in the first place?”

  “We needed heavy turnout numbers that year, so we could win those four city council seats. They got in and promptly shut down any and everything Pfeiffer put his paws on. We snatched the cake right out of his mouth. He was mayor in name only by the time we got through with him.”

  A server came by, took their drink orders, and hurried off.

  “Boney was a real trouper, and to tell you the God’s honest truth, it took more effort than we expected to beat him the next time he stepped up to the plate. He was no match for Dobbs, but he did manage to force her into a run-off. She whipped him good the second go-round and near about ran him out of the city.”

  “I’ve got seven thousand members who are voting residents in the Fifteenth District, not counting those who will volunteer on the campaign. There are fifteen thousand people on my rolls.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it! We counted. Ran all the names through the secretary of state’s voter registration log. You’ll need every one of them. If they can’t vote, they can walk door to door.”

  “How did you get our membership list?”

  “That’s what we call ‘margin,’” Virgil said, rearing back in his chair. “With all due respect, Reverend, you ask too many questions.”

  “I like to do my homework, same as you apparently do. This is my life we’re talking about.”

  “I have to agree with you there.”

  Virgil settled in and began regaling Goodwin with one of his favorite campaign stories.

  In 2009, after forty-two-year-old Atlanta businessman Cecil Yancey, the only other meaningful candidate, dropped dead of a heart attack before he could sign the election qualifying papers, local lawyer and gadfly Bonaparte “Boney” Jeffries took a second bite at the apple and signed up to run for mayor against State Senator Victoria Dobbs. As anticipated, she took the early lead based on name ID alone and was already picking out new draperies for the ceremonial room in the executive offices. Jeffries refused to back down and the polling numbers narrowed. The Dobbs campaign was stunned when she didn’t clear 50 percent, forcing a runoff. Boney trailed her by just under 1,700 votes in the first heat.

  The following week, during the three-week runoff, an outfit called Reclaim Atlanta launched a wave of negative television, starring a strategically darkened photograph of Jeffries. They hit urban radio too.

  A six-figure media buy, narrated
by a distinctly African American voice, ran on V-103’s morning drive show, calling him “Phony Baloney Boney.” Their slick brochures, itemizing his alleged tax-dodging schemes, turned up in mailboxes in the largely white, Northside precincts. Church parking lots were papered with flyers, with a fake union bug logo, all but accusing him of tax fraud.

  “Reclaim Atlanta? That was you?”

  Virgil clasped his hands over his belly and answered with a grin.

  “And will be again, if you decide to run,” Virgil said. “Tell me about Yvonne Ingram.”

  “She’s the executive director of my family foundation.”

  “And?”

  “What are you asking me, Mr. Loudermilk?”

  “You know what I’m asking.”

  “The situation is settled.”

  “I’ll trust your word on that,” Virgil said. “Until you give me reason not to.”

  Thirty minutes into their conversation, Cordie Russell, Bertram DuBose, and J. T. King arrived through the private, members-only side entrance. Whit was running late. Virgil decided to move ahead without him. After a heavy dinner of bone-in porterhouse wagyu steaks and plenty of Chilean pinot noir from Virgil’s reserved locker, they got down to business.

  King started in immediately, peppering the minister with policy questions. Where did he stand on entitlements? Did he support abortion? Whom did he vote for in the last presidential election? Tort reform, immigration, gay marriage, gun control? King, a former lobbyist turned health-care magnate, covered the gamut like a speed-dating champion. Goodwin took most of it in stride, offering thoughtful answers that seemed to please his inquisitors.

  “I like what I’m hearing. That being said, you know if he says any of this out loud, he’ll lose in a landslide,” King said finally. “The Fifteenth is and always will be deep blue. That’s the deal we cut to keep Hawkins in office and keep four black Democrats in Congress.”