How Wrong She Had Been
©2007 by Michael Mort
Elise Berkham lay on her bed with the sheet pulled up over her lithe, naked body, contemplating what she had just done, when her bedside phone rang and startled her. She took a deep breath. Elise thought she knew who the caller was, but she hoped it would be Ronald instead. She reached for the phone and shut her eyes as she picked up the receiver.
“We got it all,” came the husky voice. It wasn’t Ronald. Elise pressed her moist eyes shut even tighter in a wince of anguish. “Good job,” the voice on the other end continued. “Now we need you to stay put for a little while…an hour at least.”
Strange request, but it didn’t matter. Elise didn’t feel like moving anyway. She was sick of this. “Okay.” Her voice cracked as she choked back a tear.
“What?”
Elise cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll stay put.”
As she replaced the telephone receiver, she felt more tears moisten her pillow. She rolled onto her back again. Her hands covered her face and she cried aloud with long low sobbing that shook her entire body.
It had started out right in her mind, but how wrong she had been. When “they” approached her three months ago—the two well-dressed men who wanted to be called only Frank and Tony—she thought she was impervious to love.But how wrong she had been! They were upfront with her right from the start. They wanted to discredit Ronald White, the junior Senator from Indiana who had become a presidential hopeful. He was a phenom precisely because he was an anomaly: A conservative Black Republican. She assumed Frank and Tony were somehow associated with the Democratic Party, her political party of choice, but they refused to talk about their own politics. Frank and Tony stressed how dangerous Ronald White was becoming, and they needed a way to stop him.
As Elise recalled those early conversations, she now realized how they had duped her. Frank and Tony were smooth. They appealed to her compassion for the poor and at the same time made her start thinking of ways that a Black conservative could be stopped. She couldn’t recall now who originally came up with the idea, but Frank and Tony always credited her with being the first to express it. Oh God, how wrong she had been!
Her sobbing subsided. She started to think more clearly now. She couldn’t continue this. She had to alert Ronald. She loved him!
She grabbed the telephone receiver again and punched in his number. He was on speed-dial in her cell phone, but she didn’t want to take the time to get out of bed for that. Besides, she still knew his number by heart.
Voicemail. Beep! “Ronald, darling. I, uh, gosh…,” Elise had hoped to get him live. She sniffed, wiped her tears, then palmed the sweat off her forehead and pushed her curly blond bangs on top of her head. “Listen, honey. I really need to talk to you. Is there any chance you can come back to my place right away?” Elise paused. What else could she say in a voicemail? “Call me, honey, please?”
She replaced the receiver. Now her mind raced. What about the money she’d taken? It wasn’t that much. Frank and Tony had convinced her that this was the “right thing to do,” which meant doing it for money shouldn’t be a consideration. Basically she had received only a little reimbursement of “expenses,” mostly for sexy outfits. Couldn’t have been more than a few hundred. She could certainly scrape that much together and give it all back to them.
But that wasn’t the worst. What if Frank and Tony were right? What if middle America wasn’t ready to see a Black presidential candidate with a white woman? Oh fiddle! Middle America loved Tiger Woods, and he was a Black-Asian man with a white woman! Besides, Ronald had enough charm to make up for it.
That turned Elise’s thoughts. She had known about Ronald White’s charm before she met him. That much she saw on TV. Of course the news commentators belittled him for that charm. They all said he was obviously insincere. What kind of Black man would turn his back on liberal politics to become a Republican? She’d even heard him called an “Uncle Tom” on more than one occasion. Yes, before she’d met Ronald White, she was sure she wouldn’t like him. But how wrong she had been!
Frank and Tony found a venue for them to meet, a homeless shelter run by a Christian organization. Normally Elise wouldn’t be found dead in a church-based homeless shelter, but Ronald was known to go at least once a month….
Elise heard her cell phone signal an incoming text message. It had to be Ronald! She threw back the sheet and dashed across her bedroom in front of the open blinds where late spring sunlight blazed in. She fished her cell phone out of her leather jacket and flipped it open.
Got ur vm. Will return in a few. Hope ur still in bed. MWAH!
Elise’s heart leapt. She re-read the text message, then shut her phone and cradled it between her breasts. She stalked back to her bed and eased herself between the sheets once again.
She’d tell him the truth, starting with the most important fact of all: She loved him. She’d stress that it was him she loved. Not his fame or the spotlight of politics in this crazy city on the Potomac. Him! She loved his intellect, his drive, his passion to do right by people, and especially the way he made her feel. She loved how he had always been a gentleman, how he had resisted having sex right away because he didn’t think it was good to have sex before they knew the relationship was right. Last night had been their first time since they met over two months ago. It was soright!
Elise winced again. She had initiated all the sexual overtures from the very beginning. That was the plan; Frank and Tony would photograph them in her bedroom from a room across the street. She glanced now at the open blinds. She was supposed tell the newspapers Ronald had used her and discarded her.
Her chest heaved. She would have to tell Ronald the bad too. She had to be honest with him. He had to be able to trust her. When the pictures hit the tabloids, then the major media—which Frank and Tony were no doubt already approaching—she needed Ronald to be certain where she stood. She loved him! God, she hoped he would believe her!
Elise heard the deadbolt turn in her apartment door. Her heart raced. “Ronald! My love! Back here! I stayed in bed just like you wanted me to!”
She heard the masculine fall of his footsteps on her hardwood floors. She couldn’t wait for him to enter her bedroom, come over and kiss her. Oh, how wrong she had been! But finally, she’d come to her senses! She loved him!
Elise Berkham’s bedroom door edged open slightly. “Oh, Ronald! I’m so glad you—”
Only a gloved hand appeared around the door. It was holding a revolver, the long barrel of which was pointed at Elise.
“Ronald!” Elise screeched. “What—”
Pft-pft-pft.
Elise felt the first bullet slam into her chest. The other two were superfluous.
* * *
The DC police Captain approached Detective Leeds’s desk and found the detective leaning back in his chair with his feet propped on his metal desk and a giant smile on his face.
“Good one?” asked the Captain.
Leeds nodded. “Uncle Tom’s going down.”
The Captain raised his eyebrows. “That easy?”
Leeds sucked on a straw in his latte. “Smart Senator Ronald White ain’t so smart after all. Cell and telephone records,plus a clandestine video camera in the deceased’s closet. Really good footage of their sexcapade, then of her screaming his name just as she was shot. And, if that weren’t enough, the woman had a secret bank account withlarge weekly deposits going back…bingo!…right to the time she met the Senator. Each deposit getting bigger and bigger.”
“Blackmail?”
Leeds shrugged. “Probably just a kept woman at first. But she knew she had a hold of something.”
“Alibi?”
Leeds shook his head. “Mr. Goodbar admits he was with her last night. Claims he was delayed on his way home this morning. Accosted while walking. And his cell phone was supposedly missing after the mugger fled. But the cell phone was discovered in the Senator’s apartment when we searched it. Hidden in a safe in his bedroom closet along with the smoking gun. A safe and gun which he claims he never purchased.”
The Captain shook his head and turned. “Try to stay off camera.”
Detective Leeds dropped his head back and grinned even broader.