“Humpf.” Emmit looked around again and stepped in closer to Jamison. “Like I told you, we all have secrets.”
“What did you get on him?”
“Dax Thomas has herpes.” Emmit’s index finger dug into Jamison’s shoulder with each word.
“Herpes?” Jamison repeated as he drank in the information. He hadn’t really decided yet what he’d do if something came out of Emmit’s pump. If he really wanted to stop Dax or just get the kid to lay off. Pumps had a way of getting out of control. He’d seen people’s lives ruined. Seemingly innocent front-page news stories about married Secret Service agents sleeping with underage girls in Colombia looked like commonplace news stories to the public, but insiders knew it was just likely a caper consciously produced to collect damages for some intimate infraction that would likely never bubble to the surface. It was ugly.
“How’d you find out?”
“His ex-girlfriend came to my guy after he slipped her some pictures of Dax with some new girl he met online.” Emmit laughed. “That’ll do it.”
“But I don’t get it. Millions of people have herpes, Emmit,” Jamison said. “How’s that going to get him in the pocket?”
Emmit began to whisper. “Because the ex-girlfriend didn’t know Dax had herpes until she got it from him. And the new girlfriend had no idea. The beauty of online dating.”
“I don’t know—”
“Look, Dax is young, single, he has a little bit of money and his face on television. There’s no way he wants this to get out,” Emmit pointed out as Jamison weighed the information. The danger in pushing someone based upon this kind of information was that sometimes the person didn’t care about the information being released. Sometimes they went ahead to their wives about their porn addictions and male mistresses. Checked into a sex clinic and then came out singing like a free bird. Singing loud and long notes.
“It’s risky. You know it.”
“No, what’s risky, youngblood, is you letting this cat continue to keep his foot lodged in your ass. How’s the baby?”
Jamison didn’t respond. This was a jab about the pictures from the hospital. Dax had covered that too. He came to the office with a camera crew and hard questions. Made Jamison look like a fool.
“And that’s just the small stuff, Jamison,” Emmit said. “What do you think he’ll do when he runs out of parlor shit?”
“What if we can’t pin it on him? If this woman’s just some angry ex?”
“We have pill bottles. Herpes medication with his name on it.”
Jamison let out a deep breath.
“You’re running with the big boys right now,” Emmit said, sensing Jamison’s uneasiness. “This is what we do. You can’t be powerful if you don’t know how to keep power, son.”
Jamison nodded.
Emmit stepped back and searched Jamison’s face for approval.
“I’ll have my guy talk to him,” Emmit said when he saw the lines in Jamison’s forehead soften. “Just a conversation. See where he’s coming from.”
Jamison looked away. Buried his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know. Let’s just wait on that.”
Emmit looked unsurprised but still a little annoyed. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”
And just like that the brothers departed like strangers. One walked in one direction; the other in another.
Kerry was waiting for Jamison outside of her car. The motor was running though. Tyrian was inside the backseat watching a movie on his iPad.
“What did he want?” Kerry asked Jamison, nodding to the position on the knoll where he had been talking to Emmit.
“Just some frat stuff.”
Kerry looked like she’d just smelled something rotten.
“Why are you always like that about Emmit?” Jamison asked.
“Come on, my mother’s friends with his wife; I know who he is,” Kerry said. “And it’s nothing to play with.” She locked her eyes on Jamison. “I keep trying to tell you.”