Influence

by Carl Weber

Genres: African American Urban; Legal Thrillers

Synopsis

When he graduates with his law degree, handsome and charismatic Langston Hudson is ready to hit the ground running as a lawyer with his family's firm, but a routine traffic stop during a night out with his friends quickly derails his plans and turns his world upside down.

When he graduates with his law degree, handsome and charismatic Langston Hudson is ready to hit the ground running as a lawyer with his family's firm, but a routine traffic stop during a night out with his friends quickly derails his plans and turns his world upside down.

To complicate matters, Jacqueline discovers that her firm is being sued by a former secretary for sexual harassment and illegal termination. Her older son, Lamont, who is also a lawyer, has been using the law firm like a personal dating service for much too long, and his misbehavior might have finally caught up with him.

Desiree, Jacqueline's only daughter, is quite reserved compared to her siblings. She's the good girl who doesn't normally like to rock the boat, but in what could be considered the worst of all timing, she is falling for Perk. The problem is he's been an employee at the firm for so long that he's practically considered family.

Given the problems her brothers are facing, now is not the right time for Desiree to introduce more drama to the family, but she just can't seem to help herself. As if fighting for one son's freedom and fending off lawsuits against the other isn't enough pressure, Jacqueline is also in the middle of striking up a deal to run for governor. She knows how much is at stake if her family's drama spirals out of control, so she'll do everything within her power to keep it all together.

Release date: August 28, 2018

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Yo, we need gas.” The traffic was just starting to ease up as I pushed my Audi Q5 over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge onto the Staten Island Expressway. It had taken a while to round everybody up, but we were finally on our way back to Howard University after spending Easter weekend back home in New York with our families. My mother had surprised me with the new car as an early graduation present. Elaborate gifts were her way of trying to make it up to us for walking out six years ago. “Hey, y’all, seriously, the gas light just came on. Somebody needs to cough up some cash.”

You want to make a bunch of college students shut the fuck up? Put free food in front of them or ask them to chip in on gas. Either way, you’re going to hear crickets. I held out my palm while trying to keep my eyes on the road, and let out a couple fake coughs, clearing my throat.

“What’d you say?” my frat brother Krush asked from the seat behind me.

“Oh, so now y’all deaf?” I flipped my sun visor down to block the rising sun from blinding me. “Y’all heard me. Don’t everybody go reaching in your pockets all at once.” Not one of them made a move to retrieve any money. “Y’all keep playing and the next stop is going to be the Port Authority and the Megabus. You got my word on that.”

“Man, why you always got to be so damn dramatic and shit?” asked Tony, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat. “You acting more and more like your old man every day.”

The car erupted in laughter. Everyone got a kick out of his joke except for me. Tony knew I didn’t like anyone joking or talking bad about my father. My pops was my hero. Shit, he was probably their hero too.

“You got a problem with that?” I asked.

There was a quiet pause before Tony said, “No, but you the one with the fancy ride and the rich old man. I’m barely getting by on financial aid and student loans. Give a brother a break, frat.” He threw up our fraternity sign, and I heard Krush and Kwesi laugh again from the back seat.

“Tony, leave him alone, bro,” Krush said, coming to my defense—or at least I thought he was. “His pops probably didn’t have a chance to get to the safe after paying eighty grand in cash for this ride, so he only gave him five hundred to get through the week.”

Once again, laughter filled the car, so much so that it was pissing me off.

“First of all, my dad isn’t paying for this car,” I said, shutting the fellas up. “My mom bought it for me,” I mumbled under my breath, only making Krush’s point.

“Aw, man!” Tony roared in my direction. “You should have just kept your mouth shut, you little spoiled bitch. Ain’t nobody giving your rich ass any gas money.”

The peanut gallery cosigned from the back.

I glared at Krush and Kwesi through the rearview mirror. “That’s a’ight.” I nodded knowingly as I put my eyes back on the road. “Next time y’all want a ride to McDonald’s late at night, I hope you got your walking shoes, ’cause I ain’t getting up. You got my word on that.” This time, I threw up our frat sign.

“Damn, it’s like that?” Tony asked.

“Yeah, it’s like that.” I mumbled under my breath, “See if y’all be laughing then.”

I felt something lightly rest on my shoulder. I looked to see Kwesi’s hand with a fifty-dollar bill in it.

“For you, my brother,” Kwesi said in his African accent.

“Thanks.” I took the bill out of Kwesi’s hand. “At least one of you was raised right,” I added sarcastically.

“Dude, we’re all struggling college students,” Krush chimed in from the back. “What do you expect?”

“Yeah, besides,” Tony said, turning to look at Kwesi, “if my granddaddy’s face was on the money in my country, I’d be generous too and whip out fifty bucks.” He nodded toward Kwesi. “Ol’ Coming to America mafucka.”

This time even I joined in the laughter.

“That was a good one,” I said to Tony. “But even if your granddaddy was Bill Gates, you wouldn’t chip in a dime, because you’re a . . .”

We all turned to Tony and in unison said, “Cheap-ass bastard!”

Tony gave us the finger, just like he always did. He could dish it out, but he couldn’t take it worth shit.

“Eff all y’all,” Tony said.

“Eff all y’all,” Krush mocked in a feminine voice, letting Tony know he was being a baby.

It didn’t matter how many times we clowned Tony about being cheap; he always caught an attitude. I would have thought he’d be used to it by now, since for the last four years at school, that’s all we ever did was call him out for being so stingy. Tony, Krush, Kwesi, and I always had each other’s backs, but whenever it was time to come up off some money, that’s where Tony drew the line. I couldn’t remember that last time he chipped in on a pizza or paid for a round of beers, but you best believe he was always full and had his thirst quenched before the night was over.

Yeah, he was cheap all right, despite having two part-time jobs, but then again, I tried to remember where he’d come from. Tony was raised by a single mother in Brooklyn’s Marcy Projects. He had two brothers who were Bloods gang members, but he busted his ass and made it to Howard, where he was about to graduate with honors in accounting. Cheap or not, I had to admire him. He’d broken the cycle.

Realizing I was going to have to make do with Kwesi’s contribution, I turned my focus back to the road. I hadn’t even driven for a tenth of a mile before there was a clicking sound, a hiss, and then the car filled with something other than our laughter and music.

I sniffed the air. “Shit! Tell me that’s not what the fuck I think it is.”

“Depends on what you think it is.”

I glanced in my rearview mirror at Krush just in time to see him take a long hit from the blunt he was caressing between his fingers.

“What the hell?” I shouted. “I know you’re not smoking that shit in my car!”

“Yo, stop being such a pussy. Ain’t nobody gonna harm your precious leather.” Krush took another hit of the blunt.

“I’m not worried about the leather. I’m worried about jail,” I said.

“Whatever.” Krush snapped his head in my direction and gave me a serious look in the rearview mirror. Krush was what you might call a wannabe thug. He got good grades in school, but he dressed and acted like a gangbanger, despite coming from a middle-class Queens home. “It’s weed, bro, not heroin. Ain’t nobody gonna throw us in jail over a blunt.”

“Yeah, don’t get your panties in a bunch, Lang,” Tony added, reaching his hand back for Krush to hand him the blunt. Once again, the peanut gallery in the back seat thought the wannabe comedian to my right was hysterical.

“Y’all laughing and shit, but I’m serious. We’re four black guys riding around in an expensive vehicle, smoking weed. You don’t think anything is wrong with that picture?” I couldn’t have been the only smart one in a group of four college students. Impossible. “We’re a racist cop’s dream.”

“Man, fuck the po-lice! Ain’t nobody scared of them racist bastards!” Krush shouted.

“He does have a point, Lang,” Tony said in Krush’s defense. “Don’t nobody care about weed anymore. Just drive the damn car.”

I thought about their argument that marijuana wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t like it was heroin or anything. It was a blunt. We all have a blunt now and then. Maybe I was being a little dramatic, as Tony would say. But hell, I was the son of a lawyer and judge and the sibling of two lawyers; being dramatic ran in my blood. On the flip side of things, I’d just been reflecting on how long and hard we’d worked on getting our degrees. Was this even worth the risk?

“I don’t know. If you ask me, I think this is stupid,” I said, shaking my head. “We are in New York, not Colorado.”

“And if you ask me,” Tony said, “you need to take a hit of this here.” He extended the blunt to me. “After three days with your pops, you need to decompress. That’s one intense brother.”

“I know that’s right.” Krush took the liberty of removing the blunt from between Tony’s fingers. Through the rearview mirror, I watched him inhale and then extend the blunt to me.

“I don’t need that shit. I got something better than drugs.” I lifted my phone to my ear. “Siri, call Symone.”

“When in doubt, call the pussy.” Tony laughed as the car’s Bluetooth took over and the phone rang. “You one whipped brother, Lang.”

A sudden whooping sound jolted my attention to the rearview mirror, and my heart dropped at the sight of flashing lights behind my car.

“Oh, shit!” I said, my stomach tying up in knots.

I hadn’t been there long, but already my dream job at Goldberg, Klein, and Hooper was exceeding my wildest fantasies. This morning, I’d been asked to join some of the firm’s top lawyers in the conference room. Sure, I’d dreamed of sitting with the big boys someday, but never expected that it would happen after only a few months on the job. Yet, there I was, along with six other junior associates, around the eight-foot-long conference room table with three partners and three senior associates of one of New York City’s most prestigious law firms. We were all facing the door as we waited for the opposing counsel to come in, like a pride of hyenas about to ambush a wounded water buffalo. The aura of power in the room was palpable, and it had my heart pounding with anticipation. My God, it was like having sex for the first time; the only way to describe it was total euphoria.

There were only certain cases that required this type of attention from the firm, and anything to do with The Rockman Group was one of them. They were by far the firm’s largest client, and despite the fact that this wasn’t a very big or flashy case, our salt-and-pepper senior partner, Walter Klein, had insisted he personally take charge. Walter was the LeBron James of the profession. He was the main reason I’d pursued a job at the firm. I mean, what basketball player wouldn’t want to play with LeBron?

“This should be pretty cut and dry,” Walter said confidently to Mark Spencer, a senior associate who was bucking for partner. “My guess is we can settle it for half a million.”

I watched Mark’s uneasy body language. He paused before speaking, probably to make sure he chose his words carefully. “Well, with all due respect, boss, that might be a little low. The other side does have a pretty good case. And Rockman has authorized us to settle for one point five million, and get it over wi—”

Mark’s reiteration of the client’s wishes, of which I’m sure our senior partner was aware, was unceremoniously cut off by Walter’s icy stare. The entire room became quiet and perhaps even a little cold. It was that type of power that made me want to work for Walter. I wanted the opportunity to be guided and mentored by someone as educated, experienced, admired, respected, and maybe a little bit feared by everyone who came into contact with him.

Despite my stellar grades and the fact that I had passed the Bar on my first attempt, it had been a shot in the dark when I applied to G, K, & H. The firm only hired six new associates each year, and that group had never included more than one African American, if they hired any at all. But somehow, I became one of six hired out of three hundred interviewed, and I was grateful for that fact every single day I came to work and got to watch Walter Klein in action.

“Offer them half a million and they’ll be skipping out of here like they won the damn lottery,” Walter insisted, pointing at the file in front of him. “I know the firm that’s representing the plaintiff. I know them well, and not from having gone against them in the courtroom.” He let out a derisive laugh. “They’re a bunch of ambulance chasers. Trust me, they’ll take this offer.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Dara Grant, a senior associate and the only female in the room.

One of the other senior associates next to her let out a snort. “Haven’t you seen those ridiculous commercials they air on cable television?”

“The one with the attorneys mean-mugging the cameras, strutting around and talking about how big and bad they are?” Mark asked.

“Yes.” Walter nodded. “The only thing more ridiculous than those stupid commercials is that goofball Steve Robinson who runs the firm. I’ve had him sitting across from me three times, and all three times his dumb ass has left at least a half a million on the table. Why should this time be any different?”

“You’re right. It’s best we stay optimistic,” Mark conceded, thumbing through the file in front of him. In perfect timing, the conference room phone rang. Mark was quick to hit the intercom button.

“Is that our ten o’clock?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the receptionist replied.

“Have them take a seat. Someone will be out for them in just a bit,” Walter chimed in.

“Will do, sir,” the receptionist said then ended the call.

Peter Weisman, one of the junior associates like myself, rose from his seat.

“Where are you going?” Walter barked.

“I was going to get our appointment, sir?” he replied nervously.

“Sit down, Mr. Weisman,” Walter ordered.

With a confused look on his face, Peter sat down, curiously eyeballing his colleagues.

“First, you let them stew for a bit.” Walter explained his reasoning for not immediately bringing in the opposing party. “Let them wait for you, sit down, get bored with last month’s Sports Illustrated we have lying out there. Then when you’re ready, and only when you’re ready, you stick the fork in ’em.” We all sat back, delighting in Walter’s tactical insight.

Everyone else at the table sat with tablets and pen in hand, ready to take notes when we finally let the opposing counsel in. But not me. I wanted to observe how Walter moved and how he handled this entire meeting from start to finish. He wasn’t a senior partner for nothing, and I was blessed with a front row seat to watch and understand why. He was who I aspired to be.

“Roll the windows down! Roll down your fucking window, Tony!” Langston yelled at me frantically.

I opened the window, glancing over my shoulder at the NYPD police cruiser with its lights flashing behind us. Can’t say I wasn’t nervous, but Langston’s ranting and raving was just too over the top.

“Oh God. Oh God. I told you. We’re going to jail,” Langston continued.

“Lang, man, calm down, bro,” Krush said quietly from the back seat.

“How you gonna tell me to calm down, Reem? This is all your fault. You’re the one who brought that shit in my car.”

“Let’s not attack each other. We are supposed to be brothers,” Kwesi added, but it had no effect on Lang’s continued hysterics.

“Put that thing out, Tony! Put that fucking thing out!” he yelled at me.

“Just chill, bro, seriously. All this yelling and shit ain’t helping,” I replied, putting out the blunt in the ashtray. I slammed the ashtray closed, trying not to sound as nervous as I really was. “We have to keep levelheaded and act like everything is everything. Now, pull the car over before we have a real problem.”

“Yes, those are wise words,” Kwesi added. I wondered if he was also trying to hide his nerves, because dude sounded as cool as a cucumber.

I glanced back over at Langston, who was finally pulling the car over.

“Now, everyone try to act normal. You got that?” I looked to Krush and Kwesi, who nodded their understanding. The look on Lang’s face and the beads of sweat on his forehead, on the other hand, were anything but normal. In fact, it screamed of guilt.

“Take a deep breath, frat. We gonna get through this,” I said softly.

I looked in the passenger’s side mirror at a white NYPD highway cop who was flying solo. We weren’t in Brooklyn anymore, that was for sure, because the cops didn’t fly solo in my neck of the woods—at least not the ones who wanted to stay alive.

“This is useless,” Langston said, now waving his hands around to fan the smell out of his driver’s side window. “And the evidence is right there in the ashtray.”

“Not anymore it isn’t.” I opened the ashtray and took the blunt out.

“What are you doing, man?” Langston asked me in panic. “You got the evidence all out in the open now. Oh God, we’re definitely going to jail.

“What evidence?” I said before putting the blunt in my mouth and swallowing that shit down. “Now, would you calm down? If your old man could see you now, he’d probably disown you.”

Langston stiffened in his seat at the mention of his pops. Meanwhile, I glanced in the side mirror, where I could see the officer headed toward us wearing reflective sunglasses, an eight-point stormtrooper police hat, knee-high boots, and a heavy-ass leather jacket. I turned my face forward as he walked up slowly to the driver’s side of the car.

“License, registration, and insurance,” was all he said.

“Uh, morning, officer. Beautiful day, isn’t it? Supposed to be almost seventy today,” Lang stuttered as he reached into the glove compartment for his paperwork.

I didn’t know what the fuck he was thinking. This guy wasn’t the cashier at Starbucks. He was a damn cop, a white cop at that, and he didn’t look like the type who’d be interested in Lang’s small talk. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but I couldn’t because it felt like the cop was staring directly at me. Damn, we really needed Lang’s ass to just chill.

“Where you boys headed today?” the officer asked Langston in a casual yet condescending tone.

“School.” Kwesi, Krush, and I all spoke in unison. It went without saying that none of us really wanted Langston to do the talking. He might give the guy our life stories.

“We’re, uh, all students, sir,” Kwesi said. He was doing the right thing, but I was not sure if his accent was helping. “We were visiting with our parents. We are on our way back to the university.”

“Is that so?” the officer asked, his tone now laced with suspicion.

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“What school you fellas attend?” the officer asked.

“We attend Howard University,” Kwesi continued.

“That’s down there in D.C., isn’t?”

“Excuse me, officer, uh . . . I didn’t get your name,” Langston asked as he handed him the documents.

The cop narrowed his eyes at Langston. “Officer Blake. You want my badge number too?”

“No, thank you, Officer Blake. I can see that just fine from here,” Lang replied. I stared at him with my mouth open, and I was sure the guys in the back were doing the same thing. “What I would like to know is why you pulled me over,” Lang continued.

What the fuck was he doing? He had taken that comment about his old man a little too seriously for me, and now he was using this condescending, lawyer-like tone that was sure to piss this cop off and put us all in deeper shit.

“Yeah,” Krush said boldly. “Was we speeding or something?”

I wanted to reach back there and slap him. With a smirk on his face, the officer bent down and began looking in the back seat at Kwesi and Krush.

Shit, we’re in trouble. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. Why couldn’t these idiots have just kept their mouths shut?

“No, you weren’t. As a matter of fact, you were going a little slow to be highway driving. I thought something might have been wrong. But from the smell of things,”—he sniffed the air, moving back to the driver’s window—“I think you were just a little distracted.”

Langston let out a nervous laugh. “What do you mean by that, Officer?”

Officer Blake slowly rose back up into an erect, standing position. “Come on, now. You mean to tell me you don’t smell that?” He let out a taunting chuckle.

This wasn’t looking good. We were so busted, but all hope wasn’t lost. Regardless of what the officer smelled, I’d made sure there was no evidence. I would probably be shitting green plants for a week.

“Smoke was damn near seeping through the windows,” Officer Blake said. “And the way you all were fanning when I was calling in your plates . . .” His face straightened up. “I think you boys were smoking pot in here.”

“No,” we all said in unison. I shot a side glance at Langston and shook my head.

“We were fanning because I passed gas, officer,” I said, waving my hand in my face. “It was really bad. If you smell anything, that’s probably what it is.”

“Do you boys think I’m some kind of idiot?” Officer Blake asked, sounding quite offended.

“Noooo,” we all said, once again in unison. The fact that the scent of weed was filtering through the car, out of the windows, and probably smack into his face didn’t help. In short, we were fucked.

“Look, Officer, despite what you may think you smelled, there’s no evidence we were smoking or had any marijuana,” Langston stated with confidence. I swear I wanted to punch him in his arrogant-ass face. “So, if you’re going to give me a ticket, give it to me, because we have a long ride to D.C.,” he finished.

“You know what? You’re a real smart-ass, aren’t you?”

“He didn’t mean anything by it, Officer,” I said, making a last-ditch effort to smooth things out. Langston blew up that effort in an instant.

“Don’t speak for me, Tony,” he snapped. “I have my own mouth to speak with. And no, Officer Blake, I’m not a smart-ass, but I do know my rights.”

All I could do was lower my head, because Lang was talking with the swagger of his father. His tone was all ego, and I knew there was no turning back for him now that he was channeling his father’s personality.

One by one, the cop gave us the once over. His glare was almost menacing. “Okay, everyone out of the car.”

“Thanks a lot, Lang,” I grumbled as I reached for the door handle.

“Please have a seat. Someone will be with you momentarily.”

Her tone was pleasant enough, but I could see right through the receptionist’s fake smile the second she hesitated on the phone. I glanced down at my watch. We were right on time. Certainly, they were all prepared for us and waiting. They had probably met a good fifteen minutes earlier, joking about how easy this win was going to be. The smiley receptionist was just doing her boss’s dirty work, but that was okay. That was her job and what she got paid for. Well, her bosses were in for a big surprise when they saw my black face, because while she was paid to be a gatekeeper, we got paid to win cases, big cases. I say “we” as in me and my son, Lamont, my first born and protégé.

I smiled knowingly then looked toward the chairs in the reception area. Turning to walk away, I realized when I reached the chairs that Lamont hadn’t budged. He and the receptionist were busy giving each other googly eyes. Had I not known this case was going to be a slam dunk, I probably would have allowed Lamont to use his skills of persuasion to play the young lady to our advantage, but we could tuck that quarter away in his pocket and save it for a rainy day, because this case was over the minute I had agreed to take it. Besides, I couldn’t be a hypocrite when it came to Lamont and his overly active libido. That was something I always stayed on him about. The legacy of the Hudson family was that of viciously dangerous, smart lions, not dogs in heat, and I wasn’t going to allow him to damage something I had worked decades to create.

“May I, uh, offer you a drink?” the receptionist asked, staring directly at Lamont as she sat up a little straighter so that her ample breasts were front and center on display. “Water? Coffee? Anything?”

“We’re good. Thanks.” I jumped before Lamont got a chance to rattle off what his choice of “anything” might have been. At least the sound of my voice reminded the two of them that someone else was in the room, as they both shot their attention to me. “Come on, Lamont.”

He broke his gaze from the receptionist and settled in to the seat next to me.

I had to give opposing counsel credit for good taste. Their reception area was more comfortable than my office. They showed poor judgement in leaving a hungry shark waiting, but good taste in decor. Clearly, Lamont was impressed as well. He plopped down in a chair, slightly bouncing to test the comfort and durability of his chair.

“Now, see, Pop, this is how we need to model our office to go after the big dollars. Downtown, a view, valet parking . . .”

“We already have big clients, and we are not leaving Harlem. We own the building.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t have a second office down here.”

Watching my son in all of his excitement over the chair, it reminded me of the year he got his first two-wheel bike under the Christmas tree. He had tested out that seat pretty much the same way he was doing now. A slight smile teased my face.

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, haven’t you?”

“I believe we owe it to ourselves to get a slice of the corporate cake, Pop. It’s a logical growth area for us, and we’ve never tapped into it.”

I looked around at the flat-screen television with a picture so clear I felt as if Chris Cuomo was sitting in a chair right across from me. The fish tank was large enough for a damn mermaid to live in. I must say that I wouldn’t have been mad to have my nameplate attached to one of those heavy cherry wood doors, but that wasn’t really my dream. Maybe it was Lamont’s, but not mine. I’d always been an uptown guy. For me, the pillar of success was having my adversaries in the courtroom become immediately perturbed at the sight of my name on a court document because they knew I was going to be hard to beat. I took pride in the number of cases that I had won over the years, and although I didn’t have the flashy office and wasn’t the most well-liked attorney in the state of New York, I had earned the respect of my colleagues and those on the bench. That was my dream, and I’d pretty much lived it for the past twenty-five years.

“I believe we owe it to our client to stay focused on why we’re here.” I looked straight ahead at the wall.

“But you have to admit that—”

The annoyed look I shot Lamont let him know to dead the conversation and prevented him from finishing his thought. However, it didn’t stop him from looking around the office in continued amazement and envy.

“Looks like they’re playing right into our hands,” Lamont said quietly.

“Yep, it’s part of the game, that’s all,” I said, noticing him anxiously checking his watch. It amused me that now that he was no longer entertained by the receptionist or the exquisite office decor, he was concerned about how long we’d been waiting. “They want us to think they have more important business than what we’re here for. They figure we’ll sit out here and be impressed by carpets, paintings, and pretty women. Bullshit like that.”

“Yeah, but, of course, we know better.” He chuckled, and I laughed right along with him. He was still learning, but sooner or later, he’d no longer allow himself to b. . .