Ghost Driver

"Look Mr..." She paused again.

"DB," I said.

"DB, if you know something about my God Damned case you'd better start talking, or I'll ..." She suddenly grabbed me by my jacket and started pulling me. I had no idea what she was up to until it happened.

She dragged me over to the bench where Kathy sat. "Mrs. Jenkins, look who I've found!" she said triumphantly.

Kathy looked me up and down. Her eyes went over every detail of my face and body, and then she turned to the detective and asked, "Okay, who is he?"

"You ... You don't know him," asked the detective, releasing my jacket.

"Never saw him before in my life," said Kathy evenly. "Detective, Grayson, are you doing it again? Honey, maybe you need to take some time off AGAIN. I think it may be worse this time. Do you want me to ..."

Kathy was interrupted by the sound of Grayson's phone ringing. "I have to go," she said. She turned and started walking quickly away from us, back the way we'd come.

If she had stayed only a few seconds more, she would have seen something that would have made her even more suspicious.

The baby on the blanket had crawled and scooted her way over to me. She tugged on my pants leg as if she wanted me to pick her up. "Dada," she gurgled.

Her grandmother looked at me, and her mouth dropped open. Our eyes met, and I dropped to my knees and picked up the baby. I gently handed her to her grandmother and left even faster than the Detective had.

The sun was beginning to set, and I had work to do that night.

* * * * * *

Darleen

The dark dingy dressing room is nothing like the light airy main room of the club. The women in the dressing room chattered away as I walked in. They gave me the once over, and some of them laughed. These women were professional strippers. Most of them had years or even decades of dance training. They had bodies that were hardened by years of that training along with dieting and working out.

Most of them also had artificial enhancements of one type or another. Some only had hair extensions or hair that was dyed either blond or bizarre colors like blue or purple to make them stand out. There were others with huge un-natural breasts or even Kardashian-like butt implants.

As I watched them walk around it was incredible. Nothing jiggled on them. Their legs, their breasts, and even their asses were so tight that nothing moved. Their tummies were tight with clearly defined abs.

I know that they wondered who I was and why I was there. As I've mentioned they were professionals. They auditioned and competed for their spots. They also competed to be the best stripper there and for better tips. It was all about the money to them.

Not one of them had seen me audition, so whispers went through them. When I took off my clothes, some of them laughed again. One woman who looked really young came over to me.

"Hi, I'm Cherry," she smiled. "Don't let these whores scare you. They're just as afraid of you as you are of them. Where did you dance before this?"

"I've never danced," I said.

"Holy shit," she exclaimed. "So why are you here?"

"Mike told me to come here tonight," I said. "I didn't have a choice."

"You mean Michael Robbins ... As in Scarface Mike?" she gasped. I nodded.

"How do you know him?" she asked. I started telling her but left a lot of it out. I never told anyone about Terry, or what happened to him. I was too afraid of Mike and what he might do for that.

Within moments, Cherry had rounded up a lot of the other girls and dragged them over to me.

"You think we have it bad," she told them. "Mike ruined her marriage to a guy she loved. He tricked her and then started fucking her. Her husband, who loved her, beat the fuck out of Mike and walked out on her. Her husband is the one who fucked Mike's face up. Mike keeps her like a prisoner now. She didn't even want to be here tonight. As far as she knows she isn't even getting paid."

The women started murmuring among themselves. A tall thin woman with huge tattooed breasts stepped forward. "I hate to tell you this, girl," she said. "But he's playing a game with you. He's been sniffing around Phoebe all week. We aren't short any dancers. Most of us would jump at the chance for more stage time. More dances means more money, you know. And most of us have bills to pay. But this way, he can take Phoebe somewhere and while he's wining and dining that whore, he knows where you are too."

While we were talking, my mother showed up. I have no idea why she was there. My mother wouldn't set foot in a strip club if she was starving, and they were handing out steaks.

"Mom, what's wrong?" I asked. All the strippers were suddenly cooing and gushing over Terri. Cherry asked if she could hold her. I asked her to watch her for me for a few moments while I spoke to my mother.

My mom seemed hesitant to let Cherry so much as touch Terri, but she reluctantly gave in.

"The weirdest fucking thing ever happened today," gushed my mom. "I took Terri to the park. That detective, you know the one. The blond they assigned to Terry's case. Well, she showed up with some guy. Now the guy didn't look like Terry. I mean he was thin and wiry like Terry and about the same size, but his face was ... I don't know different. His nose wasn't the same, and his mouth was different. Terry had brown eyes, and this guy had blue ones.

So I was sure that it wasn't him. But you know how kids are. Terri crawled right over to him and grabbed his legs and called him Dada. Shit, she hardly talks at all, but she was a fuckin' chatter box suddenly.

Anyway, when that little girl said, "Dada," he dropped his guard. I looked into his eyes, and I'm telling you, it was Terry."

"Mom that's ridiculous," I said. "It's impossible. Terry is dead. I saw the body myself."

I could tell that she was shaken up. I also knew that my mom knew Terry as well as I did. Maybe she was just holding onto hope. But I have no idea what she was hoping for. Maybe she thought that I was such a shitty mother that she wanted Terry to come back from the dead and take custody of Terri away from me. That had been his intention before he died.

I blamed that blond cop more than anyone else. I loved Terry with all of my heart. I'd made one fucking mistake. I had a few days of weakness. I was and am a human being. But Terry threw me away like garbage.

He graduated with honors and got a great job, just as he'd always told me we would. Within a few weeks of him moving out of my mom's house, so I could move in, Terry had moved into a beautiful house in the suburbs. It wasn't huge but it was in a really good neighborhood, and it had a really nice yard.

I know all about it because Terry invited my mom over and made dinner for her to thank her for always being there for him. It also hurt me that Terry invited my mom to his graduation, but not me. My mom didn't even tell me about it until it was over, because she knew that I would have crashed the graduation.

She made me realize how sad it was and why she needed to be there. She reminded me that Terry's parents had died when we were young. If she hadn't gone, he would have had no one in the audience at his own graduation. He graduated with honors but there was no one except my mom in the huge audience for him to share it with.

That made me feel even worse. Terry had to forgive me. I refused to sign his divorce papers. I told his lawyer every time I saw him that I would not give Terry a divorce under any circumstances.

Mike got me a lawyer, so I could fight it. And yes, I had to keep fucking Mike to get him to pay for it. At first, there was nothing to be gained by it. Terry was twenty-two years old, and I was twenty one. We were married for less than three years. We didn't have anything worth fighting over. Terry had left me in the house we were renting. At the time that Terry left me, we had two hundred dollars in the bank. He left all of that to me. Terry just walked away and left me everything except his clothes.

Both Terry's lawyer and mine knew that I wouldn't get a dime. But it was never about money. I wanted my husband. I wanted our marriage. Terry had to get his head out of his ass and realize that all human beings make mistakes.

The next thing I knew, I was coming back from a meeting with my lawyer. A car pulled up in front of our house. It was a 2014 Mustang. Terry had always loved Mustangs. Even Mike noticed the car. It was the brightest red I had ever seen. It had all kinds of custom parts and the loudest exhaust system I had ever heard.

Mike was bringing me back to mom's house from the meeting with my lawyer. I guess he was really bringing me home, so he could fuck me. It made me feel like a whore. Sex with Mike, even before Terry caught us, had never been about pleasure or love. It had always been the coin of the realm. In other words, I fucked Mike to get something that I wanted.

Before Terry caught us, I wanted clothes and to go places that Terry didn't have the time or the money to take me. Afterwards, I wanted my lawyer paid for or other expenses. I had never loved Mike. There had only ever been one man that I felt love for, and I was busting my ass to get him back. So if I had to fuck a thousand Mikes a day, I would do it to get my man back.

The problem was that I never wanted Terry to know that I had done it. But when he got out of that red Mustang, I knew that things had just gotten much worse. If I'd thought that things had been bad before it got much worse.

As Terry got out of the car, he looked right through me at Mike. They never said a word to each other. It was like there was a battle going in between them that I never understood. My mother had to explain it to me later.

Mike saw Terry get out of that Mustang. He pushed me out of his car and then walked around and put his arm around me. At the time, I thought it was weird because Mike had never been affectionate towards me. But since I had seen Terry, I was unsteady on my feet, so I'd been glad that Mike grabbed me to steady me.

My mom who'd seen the whole exchange explained to me that it was a gesture meant to show Terry that Mike owned me. It was kind of an "in your face," gesture that implied not only ownership, but that he had taken me from Terry.

Terry then smiled and rubbed his hand across his own face. He let one side of his jaw hang slack. Even I understood that he was reminding Mike exactly what he had done to his face. Terry's sneer at me and spitting on the ground afterwards indicated that he didn't consider losing me a big deal. And the fact that he even refused to acknowledge my greeting, meant that I was no longer worthy of his notice or even his normal good manners.

He walked my mom to the door as I watched with tears running down my cheeks. And then he backed out of the driveway and peeled out driving down the street in a display of how cool his car was.

Half of the guys on my block were yelling and talking about Terry's car then, which only served to further infuriate Mike. My mother being home meant that Mike wouldn't be getting any pussy made him even angrier.

But Mike's absolute declaration of war came when people all over the neighborhood started on Terry again. They bragged about his car. They ragged about his college degree and his great career. Mike told them that he could buy anything Terry could and more. He reminded them that he had a lot more money than Terry did, and he made more money in a month than Terry did in a year.

One of Mike's friends explained it to him. "Dude, his money is legit," he said. "He can go into any place in the world and open accounts and buy shit and get credit. They write articles in the newspaper about him. They invited him to come and speak at the high school that we all went to. He is a success story. On the other hand, Mike, your money is drug money. You can't even put that shit in the bank without the Feds sniffing up your ass. You have to hide it all over town and there are always people looking forward to killing you for the money or to take your place and your territory. Everything you do has to be so complicated. Can you go out and buy yourself a nice house in the suburbs like he did? Nope, you have to get someone to buy it in their name for you, or you get hit for tax evasion and shit like that.

Mike, have you seen his new girlfriend?" he asked. That was news to me as well.

"You know he works for Ford, right," asked the guy. "Have you seen the redhead in those new Ford commercials? Terry is dating her. She's even hotter in person. But it's not too late for you, Mike. You guys are the same age. Take some of that drug money and go to college. If you stay on the same path you're on now, you're going to end up either dead or in jail with a stretched-out asshole."

Mike began to take it out on me then. I can even remember him calling me a redheaded whore as he pounded away on me in a motel room. Since my hair is brown, I knew immediately what was going on. It was funny to me because we were both doing the same thing.

"Mike, if you really want a crack at that skinny bitch, why don't you help me get my husband back," I said. "Then you can really go all over town and tell everyone how you took me from him and when you got tired of fucking me; you sent me back."

"You wouldn't care?" he asked. "Everybody we know would talk about you like you were a ho."

"Fuck everybody we know," I spat. "I need my husband back. And Mike you can't keep fucking me that hard in that position; I'm pregnant. I don't want anything to happen to my baby."

He looked at me strangely then. "Is it ...?" he began.

"Yours," I laughed. "More than likely not, Mike. I've only had sex with two men in my entire life. And you and I have never had sex without a condom."

It was Mike who came up with the idea that my divorce could be put on hold until the paternity of the baby could be determined. That was a good thing because just making the motion was grounds for the divorce to be delayed. Terry's lawyer fired right back though. There was a hearing, and Terry's lawyer countered our motion by stating that we could go ahead with the divorce, and Terry would even pay for a DNA test immediately after the birth. He would also agree to pay whatever the maximum amount of child support, if the child was his.

The kindly old judge asked Terry if there was no chance that our marriage might be saved. Terry then proved exactly how much contempt for Mike, and me that he had.

"Your honor, no honorable man would want to be married to a woman who broke her marriage vows and had sex with another man. It's especially bad when the guy is a known drug dealer. I will pay child support, and I will be in my child's life if it IS my child. But there is no way that I want anything to do with the mother."

All hell broke loose in the court room. There were all kinds of people who started cheering for Terry, and a bunch of people started taking pictures. Mike tried to hide his face and run out of the court room. He had never been caught or even implicated in any drug-related offenses. But there were several police officers there on unrelated cases and a lot of them took a good look at him. Again, Mike was belittled and degraded by Terry. This time it was far more serious because he'd done it, not in the neighborhood but in a court of law.

It was his own fault though. He was the one who'd insisted on being there. He had hoped to get a closer look at Terry's new woman, who wasn't even there.

The judge was trying to make a case that children needed a mother and a father in their lives. But Terry was ready for him again.

"Your honor, I agree with you," Terry told him. "Being a father is important to me. It's something I've dreamed of for most of my life. And for the longest time, I actually dreamed of doing it with this woman," he said pointing to me. "That dream, in fact, is part of the reason that I worked so hard in school, while working nights. All I ever wanted was a home and a family with the woman I loved and whom I thought loved me. I still want that, your honor. I just need to have it with a different woman. I need to have it with a woman I can trust. This child, if it does turn out to be mine, will be welcome to be a part of that life. I intend to be an active father. But at the same time, children are very sensitive. Nowadays, there are all kinds of blended family configurations. It would be far better and far healthier for a child to have two parents who love him, although they aren't together, than to have two people who HATE each other but are forced to stay together because of him. A child can sense it when his parents are not happy."

"Well said," said the judge. "I see no reason for the pregnancy to delay this process any further. The lawyers for both parties will submit the paperwork in a timely manner for my approval."

I was numb. My lawyer started talking to me. He was sure that it would take the lawyers a few weeks at least to agree on the language on the paperwork. The court usually gave them two to three months to get it in. There would then be a six-month wait before the divorce would be final. That mean that approximately three months after my baby was born, his or her father would leave me.

I walked out of the court room and found my mother talking to Terry. She gestured for me to come over to where they were standing. I was very nervous as I approached them. My mother was obviously trying to help me.

"Darleen, I was just telling Terry that they have tests that can determine paternity before the baby is born, now," she said. "That way, we could find out early who the father is and maybe Terry could be in the baby's life even sooner."

"That's a great idea, Mom," I said. "Terry, this IS your baby. We don't need to go on Maury. I have only had sex with two men and only one man in the world has ever been inside of me bareback, Daddy." I tried to get him to smile.

The funny thing about it was that being that close to him, though I had been nervous about it at first was making me feel stronger. As I looked at him, I noticed that he was becoming weaker. Terry, my strong willed, strong-minded husband was on the verge of tears.

"I've heard about those tests," he choked out. "They always say that there's only a tiny chance of any injury to the baby. The odds have always been against me, Darleen. When we got married everyone there thought that we would be together forever. There was only the tiniest chance that we wouldn't. Most people thought the only way we'd ever be apart would be if one of us died. That tiny chance came through. We didn't even last three years.

When I worked at the plant, there was always a small chance that someone would get hurt. We had a great safety record. No one had gotten seriously hurt in that plant in nine years. But it happened too didn't it? And what are the chances that I would come home and find you fucking some scumbag in my bed?" As he spoke his eyes got wetter and redder. I was moving closer to him. I was on my way to taking him in my arms and hugging him there on the spot.

"The odds don't ever seem to work out for me," he continued. "So on the off chance that this is my baby," I'd rather wait until it's born to have the test done. I don't give a bubbly fart what happens to it if it's Mike's puppy. But I want my child to be as healthy as possible."

"Whatever you say, Honey," I said. "I love you, Terry. Even with the mistakes I made due to my stupidity. I never stopped loving you. And I can tell, by the way you're trying not to cry that you still love me too. Can't we go somewhere and talk this out."

"No you can't," said a very rich voice from behind him. It was, of course, the redhead. "He already has plans for tonight, the rest of the week and the rest of his life." She put her arms around him and literally pulled him away from me until she was standing between us.