“I wouldn’t underestimate her,” the ex-cop said. “She’s a hardy bitch.”
The man cut his eyes at the ex-cop. “I would never do that.”
The van stopped. The driver came around to slide open the door.
Before the man moved toward the door, the ex-cop leaned in and spoke to him again. “We can’t underestimate Emily Silverman either. She’s been doing research, asking her friends questions—brass at the Department.”
“I know that,” the man said curtly.
“She’s on the wrong track, for now, but she made a call to a hacker. She didn’t say much to him on the phone, but … she could be getting warmer.”
The man gave the ex-cop a tepid smile, betraying only a fraction of the rage that roiled his insides. Another uncontrolled player could unspool him if he didn’t get a grip on the situation.
He bounded out of the van without answering, intent on not revealing to his subordinate the intensity of his emotion. He talked himself down. Despite her near miss in the fire, Emily Silverman had no clue that she was in jeopardy. She was just helping out a friend and seeking “justice.” A nauseating thought, both motivations unimaginable to him. But he was consoled by her delusion that she had no skin in the game. It would make her a less ruthless adversary.
He walked the path to Gracie Mansion, pushing Emily Silverman out of his mind to the extent that he could. He approached the security booth, his mild-mannered game face in place.
CHAPTER
44
KATHLEEN SAT ON the plastic chair outside the bubble, relief washing over her when her attorney answered her call. He was the first familiar voice she’d heard beyond voice mail since she’d been on Rikers. There was no feeling worse than having no one outside to look out for you—or even to talk to you. She’d been in that situation before. But this time she had an attorney. Although she’d left the Life long ago, she’d never asked Bob Green to return the few thousand dollars she’d given him to keep him on retainer, more out of superstition than any concern she’d be arrested.
She’d left Bob several messages since she’d arrived on Rikers, thirty hours ago: one-sided telephone tag. She’d kept him on retainer when she was a madam to avoid this very situation. It was a down payment in case trouble came. She would have thought he’d come to see her after getting her message. Or sent an associate, if he wasn’t available. She was angry about that, but her relief at reaching him swept that away in the moment.
“Kathleen. I’m glad you finally got me,” Bob said after saying hello.
Kathleen smiled, needing the succor of friendly words. “It’s good to hear your voice. I’m worried about my bail application. Do you know what’s wrong?”
“I talked to your building manager. He said there’s a lien on the building. The equity’s not free and clear. You have to use something else for collateral.”
“How could that be?”
“It’s a mechanic’s lien. An electrician claims you didn’t pay for work he did on the building.”
Kathleen felt a tendril of fear running through her at yet another inexplicable bad turn. “I’ve always paid the bills. There were no disputes.”
“Look, Kathleen, let’s put that to the side for a moment. You’ve got a big problem with this case. As a predicate felon, you’re facing a minimum of twelve years in prison, probably a lot more. Are you thinking about pleading it out?”
“I didn’t do anything! You know me. How could you even think that?”
“I’m sorry, but you have to be realistic. Jail is no place for a woman your age. A case like this could be a life sentence if you don’t plead it out.”
“You haven’t even looked at the evidence.”
“Right, I haven’t filed a notice of appearance yet. I’ve only talked to the ADA briefly.”
“Okay,” she said warily.
“The DNA evidence is strong.”
Kathleen had to remind herself to breathe. “What about the security cameras?”
“I asked. All destroyed in the fire. I hate to talk about this, Kathleen. It’s the worst part of my job. But I need seventy-five thousand dollars to begin work on this case and another hundred thousand or more if the case goes to trial. Do you have that?”
A whoosh of fury flushed Kathleen’s face. She knew the deal. The defendant wasn’t going to get more money as time went on in a case. People accused of crimes were generally unemployable, and unless they were wealthy, they lost everything before they even got to trial. So criminal lawyers set a price at the beginning and wanted to be paid in full up front. And the DA was saying she was broke. That was the crux of the case against her. Bob wasn’t treating her with the care due a long-term client because he was worried that she was broke. And he wouldn’t be able to count on her building as collateral for his fee either. Besides the mechanic’s lien, if she were convicted of arson, there would be a line of victims suing her—her tenants, their insurance companies, even the City, which had spent money putting out the fire.
She took a long breath. That was why he hadn’t taken the trip to Rikers to see her.
She didn’t let on that their attorney-client relationship was coming to an end. She deserved better than his complete lack of faith in her. But for now, she would keep him hoping for a big payday so he could complete one more task. “We need to get me out first. I’m going to send someone to see you. You know what to do when she gets there.”
“Okay. I know.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. We’ll talk more about your fee then.”
Kathleen hung up, the conversation replaying in her head. The anxiety came in electric waves. She was too old for this. But plea bargaining would not be an option, not that she could imagine pleading guilty to arson.
She walked back to her cell and lay on her cot under a window made of translucent material that let in diffuse light, allowing her to see a glimmer of the outdoors: razor wire, weeds, and dark water. The cell door rumbled closed.
She’d long imagined that her days of worrying about imprisonment were over. The business she’d run for nearly twenty years had prevented her from entirely letting go of the idea that she might end up back here. It had caused her a constant thrum of anxiety under her calm businessperson’s surface. She’d truly relaxed into her life only after she’d retired.
She might have fought harder to have a relationship with Lauren years ago if she hadn’t been living a risky lifestyle. She’d known her work could mean arrest and renewed trauma for Lauren. Because of that, she’d accepted that it might be better to spare her daughter by honoring her wish not to have a relationship. But it seemed Kathleen hadn’t avoided that result after all, and now she’d drawn her granddaughter into her life too. She couldn’t whistle back what she’d done to insinuate herself into Emily’s life. But now she had to consider whether she would get Emily and Lauren even more involved. Unless the two walked away from her without looking back, Kathleen’s situation might bring them still more pain. Right now, with a dark hopelessness settling into her, Kathleen doubted she was worth it.
Yet, when she reviewed her list of friends and acquaintances, there was no one else she could trust with the next task that needed to be done. Her entire life was at stake. It had to be Lauren and Emily. If she was lucky, she’d get another chance to make a call tonight.
CHAPTER
45
LAUREN HEARD THE front door open, someone entering her apartment. She hadn’t looked up from her computer screen for hours. Focusing on her clients’ problems, solving their legal puzzles with an artful phrase or deft argument, was a relief from thinking about her own life.
Emily entered, and Lauren rose from her desk in a corner of the living room, happy to see her daughter. “Hi, honey. Where’s Skye?”
“Hector’s night.” Emily hugged her. “Mom, we need to do something about this situation.”
“What if I want to forget there is a situation?”
“I heard from Kathleen. I finally talked to her.”
Emily spoke quickly, ignoring what Lauren had said. “They’re not accepting her building as collateral. She’s been on Rikers for three days. We cannot leave her in jail. She’s too old.”
Lauren’s back stiffened. She took in the strain on her daughter’s face and knew Emily’s concern came from a good place. She’d brought her daughter up to care about others and about fairness, but she’d be damned if she’d allow her own mother to take advantage of that and break Emily’s heart the way she’d broken Lauren’s.
Emily went on, “Somebody put a lien on her building, and she needs a hundred thousand dollars.”
Kathleen asking Emily for that kind of money hit Lauren like an errant pitch. She choked out the words. “She asked you for a hundred thousand dollars?”
“No!”
“Oh, so she wants you to ask me for it, I get it.” Lauren began to pace, furious.
“Ooh, you are so infuriating.” Emily threw up her arms. “I didn’t ask you for the money, and she didn’t ask me. She just wants us to go see her lawyer.”
Lauren paused, taking that in. “No way. I don’t want to be involved. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s to be careful about who you let into your orbit. It will be one drama after the next with her. The camel’s nose under the tent.”
“Bad things happen to good people, Mom. You of all people should know that.”
Lauren turned away. She was completely out of sorts over the reappearance of her mother in her life. She would have made an emergency appointment with her therapist if she had one. Instead, she’d called Jessica and listened to her calm assurances. She’d of course told Carl too. He wasn’t happy about her criminal mother showing up, even though he wouldn’t outright tell Lauren what she should do. Family was family in Carl’s mind, not so easy to write off. He’d bailed a nephew out of jail a couple of years ago, and he had an uncle who’d done time. Even though Carl was a cop, he didn’t disown family for their mistakes.
Emily spoke slowly, overenunciating. “She has a safe-deposit box. She gave me the code name and box number. She said to pick up the extra key from her lawyer. What harm could it do? I don’t agree with you about Kathleen. She’s not a person who causes chaos in other people’s lives. But two heads are better than one here, and I’d really appreciate you coming with me. I hate to admit it, but you may be right that I’ve been naïve. As annoying as it can be, your skepticism is kind of helpful.”
* * *
An hour later, an administrative assistant in a small law office handed Lauren a sealed envelope containing a key. Once again, Emily had struck at Lauren’s Achilles’. It was hard to turn down the rare request for support from her typically self-sufficient daughter. And beyond that, she really was curious about what they’d find in the safe-deposit box.
Lauren tried not to read too much into Kathleen’s lawyer not coming out to see them in the firm’s reception area. Maybe he’d already left for the day.
Lauren and Emily walked twelve blocks from the lawyer’s office to the address Kathleen had given Emily, an office building on Lexington Avenue. While they walked, Emily talked about sex worker blogs and internet bulletin boards where people tried to catch serial killers.
Lauren sighed. “I wish you weren’t getting in so deep. Sometimes the killers are actually members of the internet groups investigating them.”
“I’m just lurking. No one even knows I’m there. I’ve been doing some research into arson investigations too. It’s true that DNA can be found under ash. But in a fire this intense, the arsonist must have started the fire so the accelerant led away from the flash point. It feels similar to Kathleen’s bank accounts being drained. A setup. Who would have the ways and means and knowledge to do that? Or the motive?”
Reverting to an old habit from her days as an addict, Lauren looked around before they entered the building. Her eyes met a man’s gaze for an intense second before he looked down the block at an approaching bus. Anxiety tightened Lauren’s chest until she glanced back to see him get on the bus.
To the right of the building’s lobby were double glass doors without a name on them. A receptionist behind the expansive curved lacquer desk in the carpeted entry area turned a cash-register-style iPad toward Lauren. Emily showed Lauren her phone, open to the numbers Kathleen had given her that Emily had typed into her notes. Lauren typed Kathleen’s username and password into the iPad login screen. Halfway through typing, Lauren realized she was entering her own initials and birth date. She drew back her hand as if shocked by an electric current.
What if Kathleen had, decades ago, resumed being the normal person she’d been when Lauren was a child, before crack and apparently psychosis? What if she’d resumed being the woman who’d helped Lauren with her first-grade homework every weeknight and who’d taken her to the playground on dewy weekend mornings? Although Lauren had always blamed her mother for everything, fuzzy memories came back to her now of waking up in the morning and her father not being there. His side of the bed hadn’t been slept in. She remembered the worry in her mother’s eyes—and a fake smile that failed to hide her sadness.
“What do you want to do today?” Lauren’s mother would ask, pulling Lauren into bed to cuddle.
If that was the woman who’d been walking around in the world for the last thirty-three years, how had she felt, alone and without her daughter? How would Lauren have felt if she’d lost Emily for decades? Would she be using Emily’s birthday for passwords? Would she be stalking Emily’s children on Facebook? She felt tears coming: Hell yes.
“Ma’am?”
“Mom.”
Lauren looked at Emily. The woman smiled at Lauren politely.
“You have to press enter,” Emily said.
“Oh, sorry.” Lauren smiled sheepishly at the receptionist.
The woman said, “No worries,” and picked up her phone.
A moment later, a man with a military bearing opened a door at the back of the reception area. He appraised Lauren and Emily. “This way.”
Lauren wondered momentarily why Kathleen trusted her after decades apart, after barely having a conversation with her since Lauren was fifteen. But Lauren now knew that Kathleen had been keeping track of her. Lauren was sure Kathleen would have friended her on Facebook, too, if Lauren had been on Facebook. This whole incident was the best I-told-you-so to those who said people like Lauren were unduly paranoid about their privacy. But what harm had Kathleen really done?
Lauren and Emily followed the security guard to a room full of safe-deposit boxes. It was clearly a safe place, but Lauren didn’t feel safe taking this step toward helping her mother.
The man turned a key, and Lauren turned hers. He lifted the box and took it to a small room with a couple of chairs and a table. It was a large box, about two square feet.
“I’ll be out here.” He pointed to a button on the wall next to the door. “Signal when you’re done.” He closed the door behind himself.
Emily didn’t wait for Lauren. She opened the box.
CHAPTER
46
A CALL ON the PA system interrupted the steady flow of R and B and hip-hop that was piped into the cells of Rikers Island from dawn until lights-out. A female CO spoke over the PA system from the bubble: “Kathleen Harris. On the visit.”
Kathleen sat up in her cot with a start. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She slipped on her sneakers. The cell door rolled open in time for her to walk out.
“I’m Kathleen Harris.” She said through the speak-hole at the bubble.
“Go on. To the gate.” The CO handed Kathleen a pass through a slot under the speak-hole. She pointed Kathleen toward a barred gate that led to a wide outer corridor that ran the length of the jail.
Kathleen walked the corridor, allowing herself a moment of fantasy about who could be visiting. She hoped for Emily, or even Lauren, although she knew it was highly unlikely.
In a changing room near the visiting area, Kathleen took off her jail greens and put on an orang
e jumpsuit that left a layer of cold air between her narrow frame and its stiff cloth. The bright jumpsuits prevented inmates from walking out unnoticed among the visitors. And when wearing jumpsuits, the women couldn’t easily place a drug-packed balloon into an orifice.
Kathleen sat in the grim waiting room filled with orange-garbed women. It was jail-style hurry-up-and-wait. A corrections officer sat at a desk next to the door that led to the visiting room. Nearly an hour after Kathleen arrived, he called a list of names: “Jones, Mack, Tavares, Morrison, Harris.”
Kathleen lined up and filed through the door to the visiting room. Rows of school desks stretched the length of the room. Inmates sat on one side of each row of desks and visitors sat on the other side, which allowed the COs to see up the rows. The place echoed with dozens of conversations amplified by poor acoustics.
Kathleen scanned the room for a possible visitor. Her eyes rested on a young inmate kissing her baby, tears in her eyes, while an older woman, a grandmother or caseworker, watched grimly from across the desk. Kathleen remembered that as the most painful sight in prison, the mothers separated from their babies. Yet those women had been more fortunate than Kathleen, who had few visits during her five years in prison and never one with Lauren. Kathleen’s mother had made one visit on Kathleen’s first birthday inside, which had only served as a reminder of what their relationship lacked. They hadn’t repeated the uncomfortable event, which had been punctuated by her mother’s nervous distraction and awkward silences. Kathleen had been glad. She’d been relieved to avoid the visiting area completely. The sight of women with their visiting children had wrecked her. It took her days to get back on an even keel after that.
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