Chapter 5

Girls Get Boys

Mary

It came as no surprise to me how much the infidelity of my husband hurt me. It was an unexpected development seeing as Jason is not the kind of man that chases women, or who has much, if any, amorous success with the opposite sex. However, there is no denying he is physically attractive, and more so now that he seems to spend his every free moment at the gym.

I thought his gym time was an excuse to avoid me, and the problems in our marriage, and I was sure the physical and aggressive exercise he pursued, helped him work through his negative feeling. However, bare-chested, covered in sweat, and pounding on another man, he was even more appealing than usual to a certain type of woman. I had recognized Latisha White as that kind of woman the first time I met her.

As the saying goes, it takes one to know one. Latisha was manipulative, sexually aggressive, and inclined to use and discard men without the least bit of remorse. Moreover, she was smart, and I suspected the type that planned well ahead. She was very like me. I feared we were different only in the tint of skins and our ages. She was young, far to young for my comfort.

For the better part of the month of November, Latisha had been seen with Jason. They were at the gym together where she watched him train for his exhibition match with Joe Crawford. They were seen in upscale restaurants where she paid, and little Delis and bistros, where my husband picked up the check. However, far more disturbing they were often together overnight at his room in Queens or her place in Brooklyn’s Carol Gardens.

I decided to confront her in the hope of putting an end to it before everyone, I knew, was aware that my husband was stepping out on me and before things spiraled out of control.

“Well, you got here quick,” she said.

I had taken the seat opposite her at the Starbucks nearest to the Merrill office. She frequented the place several times each day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. She would ensconce herself at a corner table and work from her laptop.

“You were expecting me?”

“Of course, the minute I started to rope in your steer, I figured you would show up,” she said with a smirk.

“I assume the steer is my husband, Jason.”

“Well, maybe steer is the wrong word because he is quite the bull in bed.”

She said this barely looking up from her laptop.

I leaned forward and closed the cover of the machine, and said, “I hope I’m not interrupting, but we have something important to discuss.

“And what would that be?”

“Your intentions as regards my husband.”

“Oh, that,” she said, “I mean to marry him. I like boxers, but I require a man to have a profession that doesn’t entail being beat to a pulp periodically. Teaching is the best. They get lots of time off. Jason will fit my needs nicely.”

“Don’t you think his being married to me presents a problem.”

“Not in the least. Merely a minor delay. I have so much more to offer. I’m young, better in bed, and I’m not a whore.”

“You sure about that last part?”

“Very. I may enjoy sex, but I don’t slut around, and I have never spread them to get ahead. We both know you can’t say the same. Simply put, you don’t deserve a good man like Jason, and I do. ninety-nine percent of the men in this world are assholes. Jason being in the decent one percent, deserves something more than a whore for a wife.”

As she finished her diatribe, she reopened her computer.

“Well,” I said, getting up to leave, “This whore never gave up yet without a fight. I’ll see you in the ring.

It was far more serious than I had thought. This bitch meant to take my man and to be honest about it; she had every chance of success. The only real advantage that I thought I might have was the long-standing love that Jason had for me, and the love I, in spite of all my sins, had for him. What I needed to do was remind him, of that, before Latisha had the opportunity to wear down the bond between Jason and myself. I had only one idea, and it was dangerous any way you looked at it.

However, before I could even begin to implement my plan, I had a visit from Jack Cardigan.

“We need to talk,” he began in a very somber tone.

We weren’t at the office he had cornered me outside our building. He must have been waiting for me.

“Ok, how about we get coffee?” I said.

“No, we need privacy. My limo is parked around the corner. I’ll drive you home.”

Once in the limo, he closed the window between us and the drive after instructing him to drive once around Central Park before driving me home.

When the window fully closed, I said, “Jack, you’re making me nervous.”

He stared at me a minute, and then he began his tale.

“It wasn’t the easiest times when I got out of law school. I struggled. I was working as a vista volunteer in the offices of East New York legal services. It was all I could get. I didn’t go to a fancy Ivy League school like you. I didn’t come from a rich family. I needed a real legal job, but no one would hire me.

“Ann was working as a teller in the old Irving Trust Bank. She was a good looking woman. Let’s just say she was young and attractive and she caught the eye of an older man. That man was Edward Kincade, Senior.”

“The current governor’s father?”

“The very same. He was a board member of the bank. He was touring the main Manhatten branch one day when he stopped to speak to Ann. Two days later a bunch of roses showed up. The senior Kincade was a bit of an old letch. One thing led to another, and he propositioned my wife. Ann wasn’t that kind of woman, or at least I thought she wasn’t. But she knew how much I wanted to get a real law job.”

“So’ she gave the old bastard what he wanted,” I injected.

“Yes, and I didn’t find out until I was working for his big-time Wall Street law firm. The whispers started my first day, and within a week, I knew what my wife was doing those night she came home late claiming a shortage required a full audit. I think I was just hurt. Not angry like Jason, how could I be angry. She did it for me.”

“I’m sorry, Jack, but why are you telling me this?”

“It’s by way of a justification for what comes next. I had no choice, you see. I wasn’t going to go anywhere in that firm. At best, I would always be an associate, and I had no idea what would happen when the great Kincade got tired of fucking my wife. You see, I had to take my chance when it came.”

“I don’t think I want to hear what came next,” I said.

“Oh, but you have to. It affects you as a partner in this firm. You see I was low man on the totem pole, so I drew the case of the young man who was arrested for assaulting a priest,” he said and paused.

I didn’t want to hear this for I already knew where it was going. I had just never connected it to Jack or my firm.

“You see,” he began again, “I could have pried the lid off the can of worms. Disclosed that the priest was a serial predator and that the boy arrested for putting that monster in the hospital was only defending a much smaller boy who was the intended victim of a sexual assault.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t. I told myself that I was doing the only thing I could. That no one would believe the children, and that I would just get fired in spite of the sacrifice that Ann had made. So, I took the deal the DA who was in on things offered, and I made my own deal with the attorney for the church—”

“Sydney Tweed,” I said, “Our beloved deceased senior partner.”

Sydney had always been in very tight with the Arch Diocese

“He offered me a real associates position on a partnership track, and I took it. No, I jumped at it, and for good measure, I set up the paperwork to implicate Edward Kincade if anyone ever looked at the case. I kept Sydney and my self entirely free of all suspicion. I thought.”

“But something has happened?”

“The small boy, the victim, was your brother-in-law. He’s almost as great a monster in his own way now as the man who assaulted him, but I suppose I’m partly responsible for that. Somehow he has possession of the Church’s file.”

“What does he want?” I asked.

“Not him, your mother. She has a copy of the file she knows everything. She’s blackmailing us.”

I had to stop and think. I knew my mother could be ruthless. It was a well known DeVoe trait, but blackmail?

“I don’t believe it.”

He only sighed and said, “She told me I can never see Tina again or she’ll expose not just me but the firm’s involvement in the Fitzgerald-Sullivan case and the firm’s involvement in other matters. We’ll be ruined. You’ll be ruined.”

“And my ruin won’t matter because then I’ll have to come home and take over running the company when dad retires. A desirable result from her point of view.”

I had to give it to mom. It was a well-played hand. My father could not continue much longer. I had helped my sister Susan get pregnant, steering her to the best fertility doctor in the country. Now my little sister was pregnant with not one but two boys. However, it would be a long time before they could take over the DeVoe empire. She needed an interim replacement.

Kathrine is a DeVoe first, and a mother and a human being second. She could forgive a man for drinking, womanizing, and gambling, but never sex with another man. I had known for years that my brother, John’s coming out of the closet had been a blow to her, but I had failed to understand how much resentment she bore toward her own son. I knew she still loved him, but I was now certain she would never accept his sexuality. Therefore, there was apparently no family son to take over the family business, leaving things to the daughters Susan and myself. I could not see Susan stepping in, and as the provider of the male heirs, she had fulfilled her obligation to the family.

No, I could see that my mother intended to force me into the family business. Now more than ever, I had to get Jason to take me back and take me away. I might be a whore, but I was his whore, and I would belong from here on to him and no one and nothing else. So, it was time to fully commit to a whore’s trick to get him back and save my soul in the bargain.

“Thank you, Jack, for being honest with me. If only for the first time,” I said as we pulled up at the door to my building.

And as I exited, I said, “ You’ll have my resignation from the firm in the morning. Good evening!”

“What! You can’t be serious?” he said as I slammed the door in his face.

The Crosstown Gyn and Boxing Club was not the kind of place you usually find women in attendance. The gym was technically owned by a corporate entity, but the ultimate owner was Felix Wright, the real estate developer. I knew him through his representation by my firm. I had never represented him myself, but I met him at several affairs hosted by the firm for clients. Felix was more than happy to show me around the place he called his second home and to show off the star attraction, Joseph “the Hammer” Crawford.

Meeting the man, I found him to be bigger than I expected. Although no taller than my husband, he had a massive build from his huge upper arms to his barrel chest. He was In the exhibition ring they had set up for his training. There, he sparred with a cadre of large men.

He’ll go far,” Felix Wright said as he stood next to me as I watched “The Hammer” sparring with a much larger man.

“He’s certainly handsome,” I said, “but can he hit.”

My comment was not an idle one. The Hammer, nickname, seemed to be one of reverse psychology, like calling a tall man short. There was no doubt Joe Crawford was quick on his feet and probably a very technically proficient boxer, but I had been around enough boxing in my marriage to Jason to know how hard they can hit.

“He’s holding back with his sparring partners,” Felix rationalized, “but your right with those chiseled looks and that fair skin, he’s the devil with the ladies.”

Joe Crawford was very fair of flesh for a man with some African heritage. The charity match for the Women’s Silver Gloves endowment as it was being billed would feature two light-skinned light heavyweights although I suspected Joe was now a bit above that class.

As if reading my thoughts, Felix said, “He’s got the youth, at twenty-seven, the skill, the muscle, and the weight advantage. The only thing your old man has is the reach.”

This was true while Crawford was built proportionate to his high, my husband was built like an ape with too short legs and overlong arms. However, I feared, in addition, that Jason might be the one hitting harder if my scheme worked. It was a desperate ploy, but it was the only one I could think of. I was going to make Jason so jealous he would grab me back. The problem was any ordinary man I used as a foil would be in physical danger. Poor Anton Chevas had proved how dangerous my husband could be.

The Hammer was going to be my new love interest. He had no current girlfriend. My research said he had a bad break up with a woman in college when he committed to boxing as a career instead of going for a master’s degree in education. My scheme was to seduce Mr. Cradford and do so in a very public manner. Jason was currently fucking that witch Latisha every chance he got. She was making sure that as many people as possible knew she was doing him. It was as if she wanted the world to know.

The only pause I now had was whether the so-called Hammer could do the job of making my husband jealous without getting himself or Jason hurt.

“Damn,” I whispered under my breath, “if only he could hit.”

“What?” Felix inquired.

“Please introduce me to that great brute of a man I’m just enthralled,” I said.

Jason

The fight, I was about to have seemed like it had been hanging over me forever, but it had only been a little over two months. It had been a wonderful time and a miserable time. It was miserable because of how hard the training sessions were, but it was great because my daughter Tina and I had overcome the disclosure of her true paternity which had threatened to tear our father-daughter relationship apart. The Cardigan’s, Jack and Ann had suddenly disappeared from Tina’s life. They had gone to their ranch in Montana right after Thanksgiving, and she had not heard from them since despite her leaving a holiday messages for them on Facebook, their email, and text.