Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (i can read books TXT) 📕

“I’m kind of pissed, not at you but that such hatred is still out there. These monsters are not as widespread as before. Like the Klan rally in Dayton not long ago where only ten guys showed up. But even when you have only ten, people like that are real, and dangerous.”

“And louder and angrier than almost anybody else,” Marlo said. “Loud enough to make us all mad. That’s the point. Anger.”

“I’m tired of hearing how angry these morons are,” Judge Chancellor said. “This country has four percent of the world’s population but most of its wealth, so they can afford their computers and tiki torch tantrums while children go to bed hungry in Africa and Asia. We use forty percent of the world’s natural resources but too many of us zone out on fifty percent of the world’s drugs. What the fuck—pardon me again—are they so angry about?”

I had met Chancellor a few times when he accompanied Ophelia to this or that event but had never talked with him long enough to get to know him. Now I was beginning to like him.

“Not their anger,” Marlo said. “Ours. The anger of ordinary people who believe in equality and hope.”

Edie Gramm shifted uneasily. “Isn’t there already enough anger floating in the ether? Doesn’t anger produce more anger when what we need is understanding—and love?”

Marlo shook her head. “I mean righteous anger. Not a toxic call to violence but a call to justice. Patient anger that gives us the strength to stand our ground and face a threat. Anger that makes us call out intolerance and make the bigot face a stronger force.” She turned to Drea. “Your anger produced a wonderful book. It kept you from being a victim. It made you the kind of person needed to take down the Morgan Kriegers of the world. Without violence, you assert the right of all to exist and call out the stupidity of his evil. You make everything plain to see. This conference must make everything so plain, justice can’t be denied.”

Drea was quiet for several heartbeats. “I understand what you mean, Marlo. But a bill comes due with my anger. It has come due for so many before me I almost feel unworthy to be in the same company.” Her eyes glistened. “It’s a cost I would never wish on anybody.”

“You’d belong in that company even if you hadn’t written your book,” James said. “The wives and mothers of too many martyrs to count paid the same price. A few stand out because they fought back. They wrote books and devoted their lives to justice. Coretta Scott King. Myrlie Evers. Mamie Till wanting pictures of her son’s mutilated body published. You belong with them. But too many names are forgotten by everyone except relatives and scholars.” He stood. “I’m willing to bet a hundred thousand the only people here who know the name Willa Winters are Marlo and Randall—and maybe Chelsea because he told her.”

Carpenter snapped her fingers. “There goes my new Lamborghini.”

“Only the down payment, Chels,” Randall said, gazing at his father.

James waited for the chuckles to subside before he continued. “Willa Winters came to work for our company about thirty-five years ago.” His tone left no doubt what he was relating was serious. “She was a Black woman with a degree in public relations she hadn’t used in her two decades as a stay-at-home mother. But she was recently divorced and had a son in college so she needed a job. She started as a secretary—which is what every business called women in such positions then. She was talented and ambitious. Eventually she became my secretary and later the best executive assistant I ever had. Finally, I promoted her to vice president because I thought her gifts would better serve the whole company.” He took a long breath. “Twenty years ago, her son, her only child, was called the N-word in a bar in rural Pennsylvania. Then he was dragged outside and beaten to death. The men who did it were found not guilty. Temporary insanity. Extreme emotional distress. This, remember, was before sex orientation was added to hate crime legislation. One witness after another testified they heard Kai proposition the two men, even the guy who first told police the men insulted him the minute he walked in.”

“The gay panic defense,” Judge Chancellor said. “A surprising number of defendants all over the country have tried it ‘Another man made a pass at me, your honor, so I lost my damn mind.’ Thank God it was banned in New York.”

“The state police thought he was lost and looking for directions,” Marlo said, lighting her second cigarette. “GPS was still new and not available to everyone.”

“Why he was there didn’t matter,” James said. “I don’t know if he was gay or bi or gender fluid, as they say today. I never asked and his mother never told me because that wasn’t the point. He didn’t deserve to die like that. Nobody does. His death was bad enough. Worse was the hate mail sent to ‘the mother of a Black faggot now burning in hell’ and to the N-word ‘too busy smoking crack to keep from raising a queer.’ But the acquittal practically destroyed Willa. By then she had been my secretary about two years. I told her to take all the time she needed before coming back in but work turned out to be the medicine she needed. She threw herself into it with an energy I rarely see. Torrance Brockhurst owes a good measure of its success to her.” He paused, his eyes filling. “About ten years ago she was killed in a chain-reaction crash on FDR Drive.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ophelia said, as others murmured agreement.

“I never got the chance to recognize her for her dedication and hard work,” James said, a tremor in his voice. “To tell her she was an inspiration and a role model, someone who made me rethink everything I thought I knew