Never Again, No More 6, page 24
“Gavin.”
“Mr. Gavin, how may I assist you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Gerald and Gary Randall.”
Her face instantly flushed as if she were caught off guard. She started looking down at what I already knew was her appointment calendar.
“I’m . . . uh . . . sorry. Did you have an appointment with them? Usually, they don’t take appointments after three, and I don’t have your name down on the calendar,” she said almost frantically as she continued to search.
I leaned over the desk. “Lindsey, I’m actually not on the calendar, but it is imperative that I speak with them right away. If there is anything that you could do to make that happen for me, I’d greatly appreciate it,” I said, pouring my charm on extra thick. “Greatly.”
She damn near melted in her chair, and I could bet money she creamed herself. She twirled her pen around and shrugged. “I’d love to help you out, Mr. Gavin, but both Mr. Randalls are very strict about appointments,” she said nervously.
“I understand and, trust me, I respect that this is your job, which you do very nicely, might I add; however, what I need to see them about simply can’t wait. Can’t you please make an exception for me?”
“Umm, I can at least try. Can you tell me the nature of your business?”
“I have some important information to give them.”
She playfully tapped my hand. “Now, Mr. Gavin, you’re going to have to be just a teensy bit more specific than that.”
“Okay then. Tell them my last name is Randall, and that the prodigal son and the ungrateful brother has come to visit.”
She looked confused. “I’m sure they’d know if they had a family member coming to visit them.”
I pulled out my identification. “I’m Gavin Randall, youngest son to Gerald Randall and baby brother to Gary Randall. It’s a surprise visit.”
She gasped. “Oh, my goodness! I didn’t even pick up on the similarities. I’m so sorry, Mr. Gavin—I mean Randall,” she stammered, jumping up. “Please. Follow me.” She led me to the door of the conference room where they were located. “Just give me a moment.”
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Do me a favor and don’t tell them who it is if you possibly can. Remember, it’s a surprise visit.”
She looked back at me and smiled. “For you, I’d try to pull any strings I could. I mean, sure I will try,” she said, covering her face in embarrassment.
I winked at her. “Don’t be ashamed. I’m not like my father or brother.”
She smiled. “I can see and surely tell,” she said as she took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
“Yes.” I heard my dad answer.
“Mr. Randall, may I come in? It’s extremely important.”
“Come in.”
She opened the door. “I know that you do not accept open appointments, but I have a man out here who urgently needs to see both you and Mr. Gary,” she said nervously.
“Lindsey, you know we do not allow anyone without an appointment, and it’s after three. Or did you forget the time?” my father chastised her smugly.
She took a beat before she continued. “I understand that sir, and no, I have not forgotten the hour. However, this man is stating it is imperative that he sees the both of you, and I think it’s best if you acknowledge him.”
“Lindsey, you are interrupting our daily day-end review session with this nonsense.” My father began to fuss.
“Father, let it go. We can entertain whoever this is for five minutes. Obviously, if he was annoying enough to have Lindsey interrupt our session, then we should at least see who it is and find out what it is they want,” Gary stated matter-of-factly.
My father huffed. “All right, we’ll meet with him. He’s got two minutes. Send him in,” he stated arrogantly.
Lindsey closed the door, turned, and winked at me. “If you’re free after five, perhaps you could hang around for drinks and dinner on me,” she whispered.
“You’re sweet, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass on that. I’m only in town for a little while, and then I have to get home to my fiancée.”
She looked flushed and disappointed. “I’m sorry to hear that, but I can respect it. You are definitely not like your father and brother. Go on inside. They’re waiting,” she said sweetly.
I walked in the door, and both my father and brother stood up.
“Gavin, what a surprise,” my father said.
Gary stared at the bag. “I hope you don’t have any assault weapons in that bag.”
I laughed. “Oh, dear brother, I could only wish. You know Randall security is airtight. It’s my carry-on. I came here personally to visit you guys to tell you the news.”
My father waved for me to take a seat. “I take that comment to mean you’ve gotten rid of her. Trust me, son, it’s for your own good. I hope you see that since you can’t beat us, you can join us. There’s always an open spot for you here at Randall. It is your company, too, after all.”
“As unflattering as that offer sounds, I’ll have to pass.”
“The term is flattering,” Gary corrected.
“No, I said the term that I was looking for.”
“You’re bitter. Understandable. So, why are you here?” Gary asked.
“I’m glad you asked,” I said, pulling out copies of the letter and the birth certificate, as well as the picture. “I’ve prayed and prayed and asked God to deliver me from this bind that you two had me in, and I have finally received my answer.”
My father laughed. “How is that, son, when I pull all the strings?”
“But you don’t hold all the cards,” I said bluntly. “I have here in my possession a birth certificate for my mother—correction, our mother, Gary—along with a picture of our mother’s parents, our grandparents, and a letter from our mother. I want you both to look at this.” I handed it to them.
Gary took it and walked over to our dad. “Jerry and Lois Jennings,” he read on the back of the picture. They both shrugged. “Okay, and?” he said, putting it down on the table. I picked it up as he looked at the next document. He read the names on the birth certificate out loud, but again, he any my father shrugged.
“Gavin, have you lost it? We know our grandparents’ names. It’s the first time I’ve seen the picture of Granddad, but what does this prove?” Gary asked.
“You were never the one to get all the facts. I guess you get that from your father. Too busy trying to rule the world instead of getting to know it. Read the race sections. It’ll shed more light.”
My father read out loud. “Mother, white. Father, Negro. Negro?” He yelled. “It can’t be. There’s no way in hell your mother is half jig. No way!”
Gary’s mouth dropped, and he fell back in one of the chairs. “How can you be so sure, Dad? Did you investigate that, too? Take a blood test for her?”
“She’s white! Strawberry blond hair and blue eyes are character traits of white people, not fucking blacks,” my dad damn near screamed.
“You’re right. She looks just like her mother. A white woman. But her father, Jerry Lee Jennings—our grandfather—is one hundred percent black. You had two sons by a biracial woman, Father. Gary and I are one-quarter black, or Negro, as the certificate says.”
Gary snatched the picture out of my hands and stared it before he let it slip back on the conference table. I retrieved it, and Gary put his head on the conference room table.
“Oh my God. It’s true. I could see it in the picture. He has a light complexion, but he’s black,” he said.
“Read the letter,” I told Gary.
Gary lifted his head, then slowly picked up the letter and read it silently as my dad paced the floor, looking like he was on the edge of insanity. By the time Gary finished, his eyes were filled with tears.
“What does it say?” my father yelled at Gary.
“Here. Read it for yourself,” Gary said, choking back tears.
“No! You read it aloud,” my father demanded.
Gary sighed, cleared his throat, and read the letter aloud for all of us to hear.
“Bullshit! This is a complete fabrication. Damned mendacity,” my father yelled as he knocked over one of the chairs. “You probably made this up to try to clear your ass. These are copies. None of it is original.”
“The picture is the original, Father, but I figured that General Custer would try to take his last stand, so I came prepared.” I pulled out the original letter and birth certificate and placed them on the table. I held it firmly so neither of them could pick it up and destroy it. “See for yourself.”
He and Gary peered at the original documents, and it looked as if my father’s heart was about to stop beating right then and there. He grabbed his chest and fell into a chair. Then he jumped up and opened one of the hidden panels in the wall and poured himself a shot, swallowing it in one gulp. He poured another and pulled a cigar from his stash and sat back down.
“How long have you known?” Gary managed to ask.
“Just today. Do you think I would’ve hesitated one moment to spring this on you two over all these years? Mom gave me a box of mementos, and fate decided that I should go through it today.”
My father jumped up. “You fucking bastard! You would do this just to try to bring me down? After all I’ve done for your . . . your—”
“Black ass?” I asked, finishing his sentence. “Well, Father, you no longer have to worry about my black ass anymore. Take my portion of the shares back, and we’ll call it even, but what you are not going to do is bother LaMeka, any member of her family, me, or my unborn child. I’m going to marry her, and you’re not going to interfere with that ever in life. Not unless you want your business associates, your buddies at the country club, and the rest of the Randall family to know that you fucked up your pure white bloodline by screwing and having babies with a biracial woman. I mean, the choice is yours. Hell, why not make it public? Forget TMZ and Twitter. Let’s just take it straight to CNN.”
“No. No,” my father said, puffing on his cigar. “Fine. You win. Don’t release this information,” he said, sounding defeated as I folded the originals and placed them back inside my jacket pocket. “But that still doesn’t mean I can’t require you to pay me back, you fucker. I’ll have your ass in so much financial debt that you couldn’t provide a decent life for your new wife and family. You’ll be nothing more than a bunch of ghetto birds living and hanging in the ghetto projects where you belong.”
“Go ahead. I’ll pay you back in installments. As for my financial situation, it doesn’t matter because I trust that God will make a way for us. He made a way out of this after all.”
My father was about to speak when Gary put up his hand and cut him off. He turned to face him. “You are truly one stone-cold-hearted bastard. Do you know that?”
“Gary?” my father asked in shock.
And he wasn’t the only one who was shocked. During our entire exchange, Gary had been in silent contemplation as he observed me and Gerald interacting. I thought he’d been too stunned and outdone to speak, but apparently, he’d developed a few choice words for dear old Dad.
“If you could still feel that way about Gavin, your baby son, because of the news that we both have another ethnicity in our blood, then what do you think of me?” Gary asked.
Gerald’s mouth dropped, and he coughed anxiously. “You’re still you. I mean, you’re Gary. I won’t even think that way about you. You’re a Randall. You’re cut from my cloth,” he stammered.
Gary stood and popped his suit jacket before he buttoned it. Slowly, he rounded the table and stood in Gerald’s space, staring him eye to eye. “And every day, you’ll grow to resent me because of the black blood that runs through my veins. I can hear it in your voice. You’ve already started to resent me. You already hate Gavin for accepting the truth.”
The flinch in Gerald’s eyes and the scowl on his face said all we needed to know. “What are you saying?” he asked tensely.
Gary’s stare matched his. “For so long, I’ve admired you and stood by you, even when I knew you were wrong, because you were my father, and I wanted so much to be accepted by you. I allowed you to rip me from my mother and my brother for the promise of riches and power, believing your lie that she chose a life of poverty rather than the truth that she simply wanted us to grow up as wholesome humans. But knowing how you truly treated my mother and hearing you prove it in the way you just spoke to Gavin did something to me. It gave me an epiphany.
“I’m tired of being the devil’s advocate. You are right about one thing. We are who we are, and that is Randall men. But we also have the blood of both a white and black man running through us. That doesn’t change us. It never will. It shouldn’t change your perception of us either. To love me is to love all of me, and for first time, I realize that the only people who have ever and would ever love me unconditionally are my mother and Gavin.”
Gerald stepped more into his space, with his finger boldly pointed in his face. “Now, you listen to me. I’ve afforded you more privileges, power, money, and opportunities than ninety-nine percent of America will ever see. You will not speak to me in that manner, and what you will do is shut up and sit your black ass down,” he screamed at Gary.
Gary scoffed and stepped back, wagging his finger. “And there it is. My black ass.” Gary laughed. “Well, let me show you what my black ass is going to do.” Gary walked over to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Gavin, I’m so sorry. I hope that one day you can forgive me. You’ve been more of a brother to me than I ever realized.”
I hugged him, and he embraced me back. “I forgive you, and I love you. You’ll always be my brother.”
He pulled back and patted me on the shoulders. “And I’m going to be a brother to you starting right now,” he said and then faced our father. “Gavin doesn’t have to worry about paying you back.”
Gerald stared menacingly at Gary. “Who in the hell gave you the authority to make that decision?”
“No one,” he said, pulling his checkbook out of his back pocket. He wrote a check for $500,000 and put in the memo section: On behalf of Gavin Randall, repayment to Gerald Randall.
“Here. This is your payment from Gavin.” He handed him the check.
“You can’t do that,” my father said in disbelief.
“Yes, I can, and I will. It’s my money, and if you don’t accept it, I have a carbon copy that proves he tried to repay you, and you wouldn’t accept it, therefore declaring him free and clear of any legal obligation of repayment to you,” Gary said to him.
My father swallowed hard. “Gary, how could you do this to me? I was there for you.”
“Oh, please. Your loyalty is to your name, power, and money. I was nothing more than a pawn to carry on your legacy. I see that now.”
My father stood up and buttoned his suit jacket. “Fine then. If you want to side with your brother in this foolishness, I have no choice but to cut you off, too. The consequences are grave for disloyalty, son, and I’m about to teach you a lesson. You’re both cut out of my will. Also, Gary, you’re fired, and you have to repay me every cent of the profit you’ve spent off of your shares, too.”
Gary laughed and winked at me. “Watch me work.” He turned back to our father. “As for your will, well, I couldn’t care less about that. That doesn’t matter. But here’s what does, Father. You can’t fire me. Last year, you agreed to the CEO position as an overseer. As acting CEO and President, I have the authority in the company. While I don’t exercise my power because I still allow you to make the decisions, I would like to politely remind you that on paper and in the court of law, I am the man.”
He waved off Gary. “I’ll just get my lawyers to say it was coercion or something so that it won’t stand up in court.”
“And I will just turn over your financials to the courts, too. Your real records. The ones that you signed off on as overseer that do not contain my signature. The ones that can implicate you in certain instances of insider trading and trading from your personal offshore account to lower the stock price of certain companies who refused to help Randall out during its financial crisis four years ago. I do believe that both are a direct violation of the Securities Exchange Act. Federal time. If you want to go to war with me, Father, we can do that. The difference between you and me is that I will bring this company to its knees before I ever allow you to win, and you would never risk losing your name, stature, and position to follow through with this little game. Sorry to bitch slap you, old man, but who’s your daddy now?” Gary said snidely to him.
Damn! Gary was more on point than I thought. To hell with Randall. That was that Jennings blood shining through, and I couldn’t do anything but have major love for it. It was the first time in my life that I even had a little fear of Gary. All this time I had thought he was just being our father’s bitch, but in essence, he was creating one—our father. I don’t think it was ever his intent to play his cards this way, but rather, he stacked his deck just in case he ever had to. Who knew it would come to fruition?
“You sneaky, conniving little son of a bitch,” Gerald said in disbelief.
Gary walked over and patted him on the arm. “Don’t get mad, Father. I’m just being the best Randall man that you trained me to be. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor,” Gary said, picking up a cigar. “Our business will continue as usual, but you will leave Gavin and LaMeka alone. Besides, we have a new addition to the family to welcome in a few months.”
After what seemed like an hour-long pause, our father looked at us and laughed. “The goose finally gets his gander. Ahh. I truly hate the both of you,” he said. “But my name and reputation mean more to me than a longtime war with either of you. Gavin, go ahead and be with that woman. Just don’t ever expect me to be a part of that tribe.”
“Oh, Father, not only would I not expect you to be a part of my family, but I also don’t want you to. My child will not grow up to hate him or herself on account of you. However, what I will need is a statement in writing from both you and Gary, acknowledging your agreement. Sorry, bro, but business is still business. As a Randall man, you do understand, right?” I asked, looking at Gary.
