And here's the thing you might not realize. Lady Flo needs that money. Badly. Really badly. Everyone around here thinks she's loaded. The truth is the family was loaded maybe 30 or 40 years ago when Lord William was young and in charge. Guess what? The money is almost gone. The lifestyle, the crazy spending, the gambling, the failed investments. Gone, as in broke. As in nothing for the next generation. Without that money, the Beignets are over as upper uppers, they're just some bony black people with bad accents.
How could this be true? And even if it is true, how on earth would Mogumbo know about it? But I kept my mouth shut.
So throw your minds back a year ago, before any of this Pharaoh stuff. Lady Flo has a big problem and there's only one way to solve it. Sell off the Barrens. How's she gonna do that? You have to remember that a year ago North Porter was Nowheresville. I love our little town. We all do. But really think about it from the national perspective. Who's going to spend a billion in Nowheresville? Bad roads, bad transportation, bad infrastructure, bad entertainment. Bad, bad, bad. Cute and livable but boring and boring is bad if you want to entice a conglomerate like Caswell. Where would all the executives play? Would you spend your billion here? Answer: not when towns like Nashville and Phoenix and The Free City of LA have equally attractive land parcels.
What's she have to do? Put North Porter on the map, that's what. Get some buzz going, and get some signs of development going. And what puts a town or city on the map nowadays? Black Pharaoh does. Hell Phoenix was nothing after the war till an early episode went there. Took off right after, became major. Look at Boise, same thing. You saw all the development and investment that began here right after the Pharaoh announcement. You think that was a coincidence?
Now Flo is thinking that's what she needs here — she needs the Pharaoh.
Which is not easy to accomplish. Why would the show want to come here? She needs help.
First thing she does she enlists Draymond. Gets him involved.
Briana makes a wincing face. No one says anything.
They become partners. He's not broke like her, but he only has upper money, he's pretty far from being upper upper. And the man, they say your husband is actually a nice guy, I believe them too, is ambitious. He'd like to be upper upper too. Who wouldn't? For that he needs money. And he has the business and entertainment connections. Hell he's known Sir Reggie for almost 20 years.
But they're smart. They're not gonna fuck with Sir Reggie. He loves Pharaoh like a baby — hell, it is his baby, only one he's likely to produce (laughs). They don't need him anyway. He's mostly just a figurehead by now, off chasing boys in the Caribbean. They need the people who decide this stuff now.
You mean Sir Reggie is what is sometimes called a male lesbian? Says who? What about all those Pharaoh contestants he fucked? But I kept my mouth closed again.
Lady Flo and Draymond take their time, work it, find the weak spots. And when they do they set out to bribe the location producers, Annie Beswonga and Rodney Kitridge-Tetuonga. Draymond does this piece. He already knows them, and they respect him. He's surprised how cheap it is, can't believe it. These two idiots, Annie and Rodney, are sitting on a gold-mine and sell themselves for chump change. I guess Reggie should have paid them a little better.
About $100,000 later we have an announcement that Pharaoh is on its way here in August. White Girl Pride Day. Lady Flo is ecstatic. She's half way home. Money starts flowing into town. No coincidence that we have three new highways underway, new high-speed rail is being built, our airport is expanding like crazy, a new arts center is getting off the ground, and we have major sports teams fighting to build us a new stadium. We have that money from the legislature to build two new schools.
So Flo is ecstatic. North Porter is going to be a place. And the smart money is going to have to get in now. Exactly what she needed. She's all set to go back to Carswell and squeeze them. Now she can win.
And then something happens. Something she could never have foreseen. It took us a long time to figure out what it was, and we never had any real proof. But proof aside we're pretty sure how it went down.
And how it went down is where Alicia comes in.
Somehow, and we're not sure how, Alicia gets wind of the bribes and the deal with Caswell maybe two or three weeks before White Girl Pride Day. Obviously we think she got it through Draymond, but we don't know how. He wasn't exactly going to share the bribery scheme with a white slut just cause he's fucking her, right? Sorry Jeff. He must have got sloppy, really sloppy.
Mogumbo pulls out the paper, the one Stony gave her, the one I shaded over that night in Draymond and Bri's bedroom. While the girls played. She waves it at us.
And here it is. Look. (She stands, walks over and points.) 'Flo..???...wild ang(ry??)...Stupid...saw pape(r?)...show(??)...saw (tr??)ansfer Ann...???...(m)y fault...' He's sitting in his room taking notes from a conversation with Flo. He admits Alicia found evidence about the bribe to Annie B. Maybe he left papers out when he was in the shower? That might be it. Alicia gets nosey and figures the whole thing out. Bright girl there.
And look. (Mogumbo points to the next part.) 'Wants cleve(land??)...no $$???...no guaran(tees??) beyo(nd??) (that?)" and "...get W???..will?? cheap...not Sm???' See Alicia is selling herself cheap too. She doesn't ask for money. She's too smart for that, she knows the money can come later. All she wants is a guarantee she'll make the final three, that she'll make it to the show in Cleveland. At this point it's her whole world, nothing else matters. Then the stuff about W and Sm? That's Wexner and Mayor Smith. Florence is telling Draymond to get Wexner on board for the voting, that they can buy her cheap too. She's setting it up so Alicia can't lose. But they don't go near Smith. Say what you want about our Mayor, he is, as the world goes, a pretty honest guy. He'd be the last person in the world to fuck with the integrity of the town's Pharaoh chance. See?
Then the final part." (She points.) 'Warn??? if???' Flo is telling Draymond to warn Alicia that this is the deal, no coming back for more. She's going to keep her mouth shut about the bribe and in return she's guaranteed to be a finalist on Pharaoh.
Sadly, it was beginning to make sense. Sadly, I can see Alicia doing it. Sadly, I remember how her confidence shot up. Sadly, I believe Mogumbo now.
Mogumbo says, "No idea why those two would keep fucking after this. You know she was, right Jeff? I mean, I get extorted I don't go to bed with the guy the next night."
Briana answers with tears running down her cheeks. "You'd have to know Dray. Be a point of pride with him not to stop doing the slut just cause of a business disagreement."
Mogumbo shrugs her shoulders and continues.
You guys might think that Lady Flo and Draymond are above the law. To some extent they are. But not when it comes to Black Pharaoh. Not there. They get exposed fucking with the Pharaoh and they're toast. The public, the legislature, the other uppers, the churches, the blacks, the whites, everyone's gonna turn on them. No one's gonna cut them any slack if this comes out.
So everything changes. Alicia, and no one ever said your wife...excuse me Stony, ex-wife...lacked for balls, is extorting them, and they agree to her terms. And Flo goes mental, actually asks Draymond at one point what it would cost to have her killed. But Draymond ain't going there. He sits down with Alicia and asks her what she wants. And it turns out, not much, at least not much they way they count things. What she wants is a spot on Black Pharaoh. She wants to be top three on White Girl Pride Day. Flo gets this from Draymond and calms down. Another cheap deal. They'd already spent $100,000 to get the show to North Porter, now they spend another $125,000 bribing the two show producers who will be voting and Miss Wexner. Judy gets $75,000, the two producers get another $25,000 each to vote for Alicia. They already had $50K each. Total outlay for Flo is $225,000. Not a lot when compared to the Caswell money she's going to get.
Since Lady Flo is a judge that means they'll have four solid voters protecting Alicia. She can't lose. And the beauty of it is everyone already knows what a strong competitor she's going to be. Not like they're taking some loser and need to stretch the votes by miles. They just have to keep track, keep track and give Alicia a little boost here or there if she needs it. Easy.
Except it wasn't easy, not at all. It turned wild because these people fucked the thing up at every possible turn. You two saw how that went down live and in person.
What happened was Alicia pissed off Mayor Smith, the only voter not in on things, and then Wexner fucked up and Lady Florence fucked that up even further and cause of all that all hell broke loose and Lady Flo had to step in to save Alicia's ass. Even after that they continued to fuck up. Which is why I'm here with you now.
This is where Judy Wexner comes in. She was in the middle of it all.
Let's start with Mayor Smith. You remember the Answer segment? "What is the role of Womanhood in today's enlightened society?" Should have been a layup for all the girls, right? Service and submission and pleasing your lord and master, right? Translation: sucking his dick and getting fucked whenever he's in the mood, doing any other crazy crap that comes to his mind. Stripping, eating pussy, fucking other men. That's what it means.
Our girls are trained for it. Easy. At that point, when Alicia was asked that question, she was six points up over Roberta. Not a huge lead but enough. Everything was going fine.
Then Alicia gets fancy with Answer, starts by saying all the right things and then goes crazy and says something like a good woman has to challenge her master to be an even better master cause sometimes even great men can forget to lead. Where's she get that crap?
(Answer - I guess I had some role in that.)
Mayor Smith isn't in on anything and he's highly offended. Smith is a traditionalist; he doesn't want to hear about uppers or upper-uppers getting challenged by a girl who is there to submit. And it's crazy because he had really liked Alicia prior to that, his voting shows it. I think that stupid tongue ring had his dick hard all night. But now he's super pissed off at her. Tells the other judges he's giving Alicia a zero. According to Judy they all argue with him but he won't budge. Finally they give up but remind him the minimum score is a five. Smith argues the point but eventually gives in and they record a score of five from him.
Because of the five, Alicia loses by eight points to Roberta in the Answer round. Lady Florence doesn't do math but gets nervous and tells Judy to check, to add everything up. Here's the second fuck-up. Wexner is a good girl and reliable upper, and she's been paid, but she's been out partying all day with her boyfriend for WGPD. About three Mai-Tai's, she hides it well but is on the edge of being wasted. She actually miscalculates, just doesn't add correctly, forgets to carry a one she thinks now. Can you believe it? Adds it up wrong. She tells Flo that Alicia is still in the lead going into the fourth and final round of scoring, Demeanor. Follow me here. Wexner says Alicia leads by eight when in fact Roberta is now ahead by two. Amazing. If they had used a two dollar calculator instead of a drunk upper none of this would have happened.
