Red Hot Liar (9781617738654) (9 page)

R
odney Ruddman was putting in some mean work on a tall stack of banana pancakes. The chewed-up rinds from several slices of salt pork lay discarded on the side of his plate, and the bright yellow guts of his over-easy eggs sat congealing in the morning air.

He was gulping down a glass of chilled apple juice when the door to his private dining area burst open and Kris Sanfrass, his longtime business partner, rushed in.

“Have you heard yet?” Kris asked excitedly. “Can you believe it?”

Ruddman jabbed his fork into the last mound of pancakes and shoveled it into his mouth.

“Heard what?” he said as he chewed.

“About your old friend. He's been running around the media circuit from
Good Morning America
to
Okrah
and
The View
, and now he's sticking his fingers in the latest local political pie.”

Sanfrass pushed his smart phone into Ruddman's hand. “Here it is. He just entered the race against Chairman Stewart Baker. Check out my Twitter. It's all over the news feeds.”

Ruddman peered down at the phone and scrolled through the multitude of tweets. The more he read the hotter he got, and by the time he had scrolled halfway through the list he was good and fuckin' mad.

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head as a dark look crossed his face. “Hell no! This can't happen. With that bastard chairing the board he'll regulate Ruddman Energy right out of business.”

“We're not gonna let him get away with this, are we?”

“Hell fucking no,” Ruddman growled, picking up his embroidered cloth napkin and wiping his hands and mouth. “Dominion is trying to be slick. As if I can't see right through his shady ass. He must have forgotten that I know where he chopped up all his bodies and where he buried them too! He'll never get that goddamn seat!
Never!
I'll run for it myself before I allow him to have it. In fact, I'll beat his ultra-conservative ass at his own dirty game. When's the deadline to put my name on the ballot?”

Sanfrass glanced down at his watch. “In about thirty minutes.”

“Well get on it, goddamn it,” Ruddman snapped. “First file the paperwork at the courthouse and get me in! And once that's done then I want you to contact that other guy who's running for the seat. What's his name again? Stewart Baker! Yeah, get Baker on the horn and arrange a meeting with him.”

“A meeting?” Sanfrass looked confused. “With the guy you're about to run against?”

“Wake the hell up, dammit!” Ruddman snapped. “I'm running this race against
Viceroy Dominion.
With his kind of political story he'll beat the brakes off me and Stewart Baker both. No, forget about Stewart. He can't do me any harm. Baker is now the enemy of my enemy, and that makes him my friend
.
And by the way,” he added as a crafty look crept into his eyes, “who's Viceroy Dominion's campaign manager?”

“Er—that contractor fellow who works for him, I believe. Bob Easton.”

A sly smile crossed Ruddman's face. “Is that right? My old friend Bob Easton, huh?” he said, remembering the last time he had twisted the old man's balls. “Well, get on the horn and get me a meeting with him too.”

 

Dane Dominion pulled up outside of Dominion Oil headquarters and climbed out of his 2014 hot red Camaro ready to report for work. Unlike the elder men in the family he didn't have a designated parking spot, but he was cool with it because he was only planning on slaving on the family plantation for a quick minute.

Snuffing out the blunt of sticky he'd been puffing, Dane retrieved a small bottle of Visine from his console then flipped his overhead mirror open and squeezed a few drops in each eye. Unwrapping two sticks of Big Red cinnamon gum, he stuck both pieces in his mouth and chewed until the smell of booda disappeared from his breath, then he hit his suit jacket with a blast of Clive Christian No. 1 that he kept under his seat.

He climbed out of the car feeling lifted with his head buzzing nicely. Working a full-time job was going to be a real challenge for him and he was gonna need to jet back to his ride to hit the rest of that dro before lunchtime. His pops had fucked his head up when he ran him that “start at the bottom and work your way up” shit, but with debts racking up with every major drug dealer in town and nothing but chicken change trickling into his bank account, he had no other choice but to follow orders and take the damn job that Viceroy had offered him.

He strode toward the entrance of the stately building looking handsome and well-dressed in his sharp business attire. A stylish Fioravanti jacket, a matching pair of slacks, and a five-thousand-dollar pair of custom made Lucchese Classics black belly American alligator boots.

Stepping up to the door, he was greeted by the longtime doorman who had been working for Viceroy way before Dane was born.

“Hey there, young blood!” Dude dapped Dane out then reached out and gave him a big hug. “Long time no see, stranger! How's the college life been treating you man?”

“Aw, you know how it is,” Dane said, playing it off. All those sweet milk and honey days of chillin' in college were over. He had slid his joint up in the wrong damn chick and all the good times had rolled.

“I'ma outta school now, man. Pops got a lil gig he needs me to handle for him here at the company so I'ma put my skills to work for the family for a quick minute.”

“That's what I'm talking about,” the old man said with approval. “Use that good education for the benefit of your family. Your father is a good man and a smart one too. Look at you! Bringing all that knowledge to the family fold!”

The receptionist in the lobby greeted Dane like he was royalty, and he got nothing but love from the Dominion employees as he walked around smiling and shaking hands with the staff. He had no idea which department Viceroy was going to put him in charge of, or which of these people would end up working for him, but it didn't really matter. He was a Dominion, and that meant he was automatically a big willie up in these parts. But that didn't mean he wanted a piece of the corporate head-game. His team could just keep on doing whatever the fuck they'd been doing all along because Dane wasn't trying to come in and take over a damn thing.
Sheeit
, his plan was to lock himself in his office where he was gonna be busy writing lyrics and having phone sex with a few honeys all day, so whoever ended up being his right-hand man was gonna have to juggle all the company balls on his own.

Dane rode upstairs to the eleventh floor where the senior executive offices were housed. His father, his uncle Suge, and his brother Barron all had plush-ass corner offices up here and Dane didn't expect anything less for himself.

“Good morning, Mr. Dominion,” the secretary greeted him the moment he stepped off the elevator. “Your father is in his office. He's expecting you.”

Dane passed through a gauntlet of high-powered oil executives who worked for his father. Some of the smartest mofos in the country were up in here damn near bowing down at his feet, and even without his college degree Dane felt grand as hell.

Viceroy was on the telephone engaged in a heated conversation when Dane walked in. Viceroy acknowledged him with his eyes and held up one finger, and Dane sat down on a buttery leather sofa and chilled while he waited. He sat back and closed his eyes and let a few lyrics run through his mind as his father conducted business over the phone. He didn't bother to listen in or to try to follow the conversation because he didn't give a damn about none of it. The only reason he was there was because his father thought it would look good on paper during his political campaign, but once Viceroy won the election and shit went back to normal at the mansion, Dane was gonna be ghost.

“You're late,” Viceroy barked as he hung up the phone and turned to his second son. “Business, business, business. That's the name of this game.”

Dane got up off the sofa and grinned as he went over and shook his father's hand. “Sorry about that, Pops. My alarm didn't go off this morning, but no worries. I'm here now and I'm gonna be here all day.”

“Yeah,” Viceroy nodded and agreed. “You sure will. Give me a minute and I'll take you downstairs and get you started on your new job.”

“Cool,” Dane said as Viceroy shuffled through some paper on his desk. “Where are you putting me? Acquisitions? Marketing? Product development? What department do you think I'll fit in the best?”

Viceroy glanced up from his desk like he was looking at a damn fool. “Kill all that stupid talk,” he growled. “You're going to the mail room, son. I'm putting your ass to work down in the mail room!”

 

Bob Easton had been summoned by a billionaire and he was skulking to his meeting under the cover of night. He had parked more than a mile away from the Omni Hotel, and by the time he slipped through the service entrance his seventy-two-year-old knees were killing him.

It had taken him by surprise when he'd gotten the call that Rodney Ruddman wanted to see him. The two men had more than forty years of history together, but they had never been friends. Ruddman was close to Bob's sons and when they were younger he had given both of them summer internships at his firm every year. Bob's wife had been pretty close to Ruddman's wife in the years before she died, and it was she who had helped plan the poor woman's funeral.

They were familiar, even if they weren't close. But still. There had always been something about Ruddman that rubbed Bob the wrong way, and his dislike of the man had only intensified during the years he'd been under contract with Dominion Oil. He figured Ruddman was making a ploy to lure him away from Viceroy just like he'd done with Dominion's brother-in-law, Digger Ducane, and his first reaction was to tell that uppity nigger to go to hell. But when he was told that Ruddman wanted to discuss a few family matters Bob had quickly agreed to meet him right away.

He made his way to the lobby of the Omni and over to the desk where he announced his presence. He was escorted to a bank of elevators that took him to the third floor where he was ushered past guest suite after guest suite, down several long and winding hallways until he was finally led into a freezing cold guest room that held two single beds but wasn't much bigger than a coat closet. A small round table was set up in the space in between the beds, and two plastic chairs were on either side of the table. Other than that, the room had been stripped bare. There was no television, no clock, and no sheets or blankets on the naked mattresses.

Bob was seventy-two years old, and his next birthday was in less than a month. He had been a fixture in the oil industry for more than fifty years, and had worked for various firms before investing in a company that mass-produced drill bits for offshore oil rigs. During his fifty-plus years in the business he had earned the respect and admiration of powerful men at all echelons of state and federal government. He even had a pipeline to the desk of the Attorney General of the United States. Which is why, after sitting in that cold, godforsaken room for over forty-five minutes, freezing his wrinkled nuts off on a hard plastic chair as he waited for some fat, arrogant black turd to bless him with his presence, he was ready to explode like a cannon from his aching feet on up.

“Good evening, Bob,” Rodney Ruddman said with a smile as the door swung open and he rolled into the room on an air of self-centered confidence. “I'm glad you decided to accept my invitation,” he said, sitting down on the other side of the small table. “It's chilly in here. Can I call downstairs and get you some coffee?”

Bob shook his head. It was nearly midnight and he didn't want Ruddman's goddamn coffee! What he wanted was the ugly bastard's head on a platter!

“What the hell is so important that you called me down here at this time of night?” Bob asked stiffly.

Ruddman's face creased in a slight grin and he raised one eyebrow and shrugged. “What's so important? Do you mean to you or to me?”

“To me, dammit!” Bob slapped his palm down on the table and the cracking sound echoed in the tiny room.

Ruddman was really smiling now. “Well,” he began, “let's just say I'd like to have a conversation about someone who's very near and dear to both of our hearts.” He paused for a moment, staring at Bob like a cat gazes at a trapped mouse as he waited for the gravity of his words to sink in.

“What the hell is this about?” Bob growled.

“It's about your son,” Ruddman said simply. He looked up at the ceiling and started counting off on his fingers. “Your no-count, trifling, dope-sniffing, bribe-taking son.” He looked back at Bob and laughed. “Damn. For a moment there it sounded like I was describing a black man, now didn't it?”

Bob's facial expression never changed, but inside his blood ran cold. “I'm not amused, Ruddman. In fact, I don't find any of this funny in the least.”

“Well, you wouldn't,” Ruddman shrugged. “I mean, you're the inadequate parent who raised that little bastard, and you know which son I'm referring to. If he was a kid of mine I wouldn't be laughing either.”

Bob bristled. “You've known Brandon and Billy all their lives. If you called me down here just to insult me and my family, I've heard enough.”

He leaned heavily on the table as pushed himself into a standing position and he was startled when Ruddman screamed, “Sit your ass back down! Did I give you permission to leave? Unless you want to see Brandon bent over a bunk in the penitentiary you'll sit right there and listen to what the fuck I have to say!”

Bob's hands were trembling as he gripped the table and lowered his wide ass back down onto the hard plastic chair.