JT hung up the phone and smiled. He’d just finished talking with Veda for the second time this morning and also for the third time since yesterday, and her airline reservations were finally set. He could tell in her voice how excited she was to be making the trip with him, and he certainly couldn’t wait to see her. At first, he’d thought it might be best if she flew on a separate plane, nonstop between Minneapolis and Dallas, but then once Janet had given him his travel itinerary, he’d decided he wanted to see Veda before then. He wouldn’t sit with her at the gate or next to her on the plane, but now that she was connecting through Chicago, they would at least be able to share the same cabin-courtesy of JT’s offering to reimburse her in cash for the first-class ticket he’d insisted she treat herself with.
JT glanced at his watch, saw that it was five minutes before noon, and went online to make sure Diana had made the wire transfer. He was still scheduled to meet Weaver and Barb at three but also needed time to stop at the bank to get a cashier’s check.
He entered his user ID and password information and waited for his account summary to pop up. He scrolled through the page, but he could already see right at the top that the balance was still showing the same one hundred thousand dollars he was planning to use for the media buy. Maybe Diana had thought he didn’t need it right away this morning and was planning to make the transaction this afternoon, so he picked up his phone and called her.
“Hello?” she said after three rings.
“Hey, dear. How are you?”
“I could definitely be better.”
JT had no idea what she meant by that, but right now he didn’t have time to inquire about it. “I only have a few minutes, but I just wanted to check in to see how soon you’ll be able to make the transfer.”
“That’s just it. I won’t be.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
JT repositioned his phone. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, then, just let me ask you one question. Did you really think I was that stupid?”
“That stupid about what?!”
“You.”
“Diana, look. If you’ve changed your mind about helping me, then I wish you’d just say it and stop playing all these games.”
“I don’t play games. But you, on the other hand, are a master at it. Or so you thought you were, because, sweetheart, as of today, I’m completely on to you.”
“What are you talking about?” he yelled, forgetting he was at the church and that Janet sat just outside his office.
“I’m talking about the private investigator I hired and the lengthy report he just gave me from the last two weeks. I mean, did you actually think I would give you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then not check up on you? And my only regret is that I didn’t do it beforehand.”
JT closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair but didn’t speak.
“Yeah, that’s right. He’s been following you all over town, even to your other woman’s house. Some chick named Carmen Wilson. He saw you going in and out of her building all this week and part of last week, so finally he followed you up to the floor she lives on to see what apartment you were going into. After that, he found a couple of her neighbors who were happy to confirm that you’d been visiting her for years. Interestingly enough, though, they didn’t seem to know your name or that you were a pastor.”
JT had no idea how he was going to recover from this one but said what any man would say in this kind of situation: “Baby, I can explain.”
“No. But I’ll tell you what you can do. You can give me back my money. Every single dime of it.”
“Baby, please let me come by and explain this to you.”
Diana ignored his pleas. “I want my money just as soon as you can get it back to me. Preferably today.”
“I don’t have it,” he said, lying, because now that she wasn’t going to give him the extra hundred for his media campaign, he’d have to use the hundred he had to pay off his blackmailers.
“What do you mean you don’t have it?”
“I just don’t.”
“JT, I’m warning you. I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and I want it now.”
“And I keep trying to tell you, I don’t have it.”
Diana paused for a couple of seconds and then called him everything but a child of God. She cursed him in ways he’d never heard before and sounded more like a woman of the streets than she did a millionaire’s wife.
Still, JT tried saving face. “Look. I’m really sorry about this, and I promise I’ll pay you back. I can’t say when-” he said, but Diana interrupted him with another string of obscenities.
Then she hung up.
He finally laid his phone down, too. What a mess this had turned out to be, because without that other hundred thousand, he had to make a huge decision. Either pay for his radio and TV ads and push his ministry to brand-new heights or pay Weaver and Barb what they were commanding. If he did the former, Barb and Weaver would try to ruin him publicly, and if he did the latter he could forget about ever getting his name out to the masses the way he’d been dreaming about.
JT weighed all the advantages and disadvantages for both scenarios, and then it came to him. Pastors dealt with scandals all the time, and as long as they didn’t each occur all at once, most ministers were able to work through them, regain the trust of their supporters, and move on. His father-in-law certainly had. Not to mention, JT’s pimping days were long over, and actually, his congregation would probably have even more respect for him once they heard how terrible a sinner he’d been but had now turned his life completely around for the Lord. People loved hearing how sinners had bottomed out and had finally turned to God, and his members would feel the same way about him. Then, as far as Barb’s baby sister and how he’d convinced her to have an abortion, well, he would deny that part of the story until death. There was no proof that he’d been the father anyway, so most everyone would chalk that one up to mere hearsay.
There was this issue with Carmen, though, but he had that figured out, too. He would go to her, apologize profusely, and tell her he couldn’t wait for their baby to be born. She would, of course, go on and on about his leaving Alicia and marrying her, but he would find some new way to put off their wedding. He’d been doing it for four years, anyhow, so what was another one or two of them? Then, if at some point Carmen finally decided to reveal their secret, enough time would have lapsed between that particular scandal and the one Weaver and Barb were surely going to initiate any day now.
So, his decision was made.
“Hello?” JT’s media rep said, answering his phone.
“Jonathan, it’s Pastor Valentine.”
“Yes, Pastor.”
“I know we’re all set for the spots to begin airing on Monday, but I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be sending over the check by courier in a couple of hours.”
“Our agency has ongoing credit accounts with all the stations you’re buying from, so we’re good to go, anyway.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear. And, Jonathan, thanks for all the time you’ve put in on this.”
“It was my pleasure, and I think you’re going to be very surprised when you see how successful this campaign is going to be for you.”
“I hope so, because at this point, failing isn’t an option.”