by Jackson Ford
My PK brushes the pots, running along the grainy surface of the terracotta. I’ve got a little strength back since we stole the car—not much, true, but enough that I could probably lift small objects now.
Nic’s apartment is on the second floor. The opaque window next to the front door—the bathroom window—is dark. I listen hard but can’t hear anything from inside. Doesn’t mean much; he’s probably in the living room at the back.
I raise my hand to knock… and hesitate.
I’m putting him at risk by coming here. He’ll be in danger from the cops, from Tanner. From whoever sent those two goons to kick my ass this morning, an event that feels like it happened years ago. Can I really do that to him? Should I?
I don’t have a choice: we need to stop somewhere, catch our breath. I can’t just back out after coming all this way.
I knock on the door. Nothing. No answer. I try again and get the same result. OK. There’s no way I can go back down to the others and tell them we’ve come all this way for nothing. Annie’s head will probably explode.
I’m about to knock a third time when the door opens.
Nic wears jeans and an untucked black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up. The smile that makes him so much fun to hang out with is gone, and what’s left is cold and hard and angry.
“Hi,” I say.
Without a word he turns and marches back into the apartment.
At least he didn’t slam the door in my face. That’s a start. I hover on the threshold for a second, then step inside.
The apartment has a long entrance hall, with the bathroom on one side and Nic’s bedroom on the other. He lives alone—he got lucky with the rent and decided that he could afford not to have a roommate. As I pass, I catch a glimpse of his unmade bed, the pile of books on the nightstand.
The living room is open plan. One wall has a counter with a tiny stove on top and a fridge underneath. There’s a sink the size of a hip flask, currently drowning in dirty dishes. A couple of worn cupboards take up the space above it.
The room has the unfinished feel of someone who isn’t really interested in furniture. There’s no dining table, and the coffee table is basic Ikea. The only decent piece in the room is a big couch covered in buttery black leather, opposite a good-sized TV. An Xbox sits on the floor beneath it. More attention has been given to his surfboard and snowboard, which rest on special wall racks on the far side of the room, rubber draining mats beneath.
The walls are unpainted, but there are two huge, stacked bookshelves running along the one to my right. I might worship music and food, but Nic worships books. He has a real thing for old mysteries—Raymond Carver, Jeffery Deaver, Ed McBain—along with a serious non-fiction boner. The shelves are stacked with dog-eared paperbacks. His Kindle balances on the arm of the couch. Plus plenty of legal textbooks, filed in neat rows.
He’s over by the sink, rooting around in one of the cupboards, his back to me. His plastic kettle is just coming to the boil.
“Um, look,” I say. “I’m so sorry about—”
“I’m making coffee.” He glances over his shoulder at me. “You want some?”
It’s like he’s speaking Russian. “Coffee?”
“I forgot to buy cream. You OK with black?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling dazed. “I mean, no. Nic, look, I just need to talk to you.”
“There you are.” He shakes out instant coffee and a little clumpy sugar into a mug, then adds the just-boiled water. “You sure you don’t want?”
“Nic. Please just look at me. I can explain. I really wanted to be at N/Naka, but—”
“N/Naka?”
He turns towards me, slowly stirring his coffee, the spoon clinking against the side. He’s a long way from taking the lead on a case, but it’s easy to see him doing it, easy to see him standing in a courtroom, chin raised like it is now, calmly making his arguments.
“N/Naka doesn’t bother me,” he says, still stirring. “What bothers me is you vanishing for an entire day and not answering any of my calls or texts.” Clink. Clink. “What bothers me is that you somehow end up in a police chase across Hawthorne that ended up with a helicopter crash.”
Wait. What?
He can’t know. It isn’t possible. The only witnesses were those cops.
Nic walks over to the couch, lowering himself onto it. “What bothers me is that my friend, who I thought worked at a moving company and who wants to open a restaurant one day and tells me she grew up on a farm in Wyoming—”
“I did! That’s the truth!”
“I don’t care.” He’s grinning now, a horrible grin, and he hasn’t stopped stirring the coffee. “I really don’t. You’re hanging out with a bunch of suspects for a murder that shouldn’t technically be possible, and I’m suddenly living in one of those Netflix series, and then you show up at my front door and expect me to be cool with things. That’s what’s bothering me. Thanks for asking.”
Oh fuck.
He works in the district attorney’s office. The chase with the chopper must have made some waves.
“OK.” I spread my hands. “I don’t know what you heard—”
“Heard? I didn’t have to hear. I saw.” He points two forked fingers at me like he’s warding off a curse. Or casting one.
What does he mean, he saw? I might have been scared out of my mind, but I’m pretty sure I would have noticed Nic wandering around Hawthorne.
“Oh yeah. There’s video.”
Nic taps his chest twice, over his heart. It takes me a second to understand, and when I do, the blood in my veins freezes solid.
A bodycam.
The cops at the 7/11. They were wearing bodycams. They have to, in the LAPD. They don’t like releasing the videos to the public, but they still wear the things. One of the cams must have been rolling as the officers got out of their car. It made its way through the LAPD right into the DA’s office.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be in the room,” he says. “I think Grace forgot I was in her office. I saw the whole thing. They watched it about ten times. Really got your good side. Yours, Annie’s, everybody who works with you. You were all on it.”
I can’t move. My feet are welded to the floor.
He finally, finally takes a sip of his coffee, slurping a little. “The cops found your van in Cypress Park, by the way. Someone tipped them off. Prints all over it, from what I hear.”
Goddammit.
I take a step towards him. “Look…”
He doesn’t jerk away, not exactly, but he freezes, eyes darting towards the front door.
He’s scared. Of me.
“No.” The word is barely a whisper. “Nic, please, I would never—”
“Never what?” He doesn’t move. “What is it you do, exactly? Since when do moving companies kill people?”
My stomach feels like it drops a full two inches. “Nic…”
“Stop saying my name like it’s going to change things. Someone is dead, and the cops think you did it, and I want to know why.”
“We didn’t kill Steven Chase!”
“So you do know who he is.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Explain it to me, then. If your friend Annie didn’t kill him, then why do the cops have you on video outside the guy’s building?”
He sees my confusion. “Yeah, didn’t I mention that? Bodega got you folks on camera. You really ought to be more careful.”
My mouth goes dry. Bodega. The convenience store on the corner. An oasis of light opposite the dark alley below the Edmonds Building, the neon open sign flashing. The store would have had cameras. And of course neither Annie nor I thought to tell Reggie to hack in and shut them down. Why would we?
Nic frowns. “Come to think of it, you told me you were having dinner at Annie’s last night. More bullshit.”
“It’s… it’s kind of hard to…”
He takes another sip of coffee, his hand actually shaking a little. “Jesus, this explains so much. Why you keep th
is distance all the time.”
That hurts. “Distance?”
“Yeah, Teagan. Distance.”
“You had a girlfriend!”
“Emphasis on had.” He doesn’t sound angry. Just resigned. “You told me to give Marissa another chance. You wanted me to keep going with a shitty relationship so you wouldn’t have to actually make a decision about us.”
“That is not fair. This isn’t about us.”
“Tell me I’m lying then.” He raises his voice for the first time, spreads his arms like he’s inviting me to take a swing.
“You don’t think I wanted you?” My cheeks are hot. “If I’d told you, you would have been in danger. I wasn’t gonna do that to you.”
“So you just made the call.”
“Yes.”
But he’s full steam ahead now. “No, see, what I’m starting to get is, like, you never corrected me. I thought you were just normal, and the whole time you were involved in… whatever the hell this is. Murder. Running from the cops. How long were you going to keep me in the dark before you actually told me this? Even if it would have put me in danger or whatever, you think you were just gonna keep it a secret?”
“Fuck you!” I don’t mean to shout, but it happens anyway. “You’re right—I never lied to you. I just wanted to live my life. I wanted you in it, and there are things I’m not supposed to tell you. If you can’t deal with that, then that’s your problem not mine.”
He half smiles. “Touched a nerve, did I?”
In the silence that follows I swear the ringing in my ears is louder than my voice was.
“You know what?” I say, the words tasting bitter. “I…”
I can’t finish. I’m crying again. I throw my hands up, start heading back down the passage. I barely make it four steps. Because where are we going to go? We need to stop. We’ve got no car, no computer, no food and we’re running out of time. My eyes find the digital clock on the front of Nic’s oven before I can stop myself: 8:02.
Six hours left.
“OK,” I say, slowly turning to face him. “I’m sorry.”
He says nothing.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said telling you would put you in danger… but that doesn’t change the fact that I kept you in the dark. That’s on me. And if I’d figured out any other way to do it, I would have.” I can’t get the words right—the feelings are too conflicted, the anger and frustration threatening to overwhelm me. I can’t let that happen. I need him to take us in. And more than that, I need him.
“But Nic, listen to me. I’m in a lot of trouble. It’s not just the cops. There’s… other stuff going on too. And I can’t even tell you the day I’ve had, which started off with me getting tasered, and then—”
“Tasered? Jesus.”
His eyes widen with automatic concern, and that’s when I know it might be OK. Emphasis on might.
“Yeah. And I promise I will explain everything. But right now everyone’s waiting downstairs, and we’re in bad shape. We could really use a place to crash.”
“What do you mean, everyone?”
“As in the guys. China Shop.”
“You’re joking.”
“Afraid not.”
He sits back on the couch, lacing his hands behind his head. Lets out a long breath. In that moment the apartment is frozen in time. No sound. No movement. I don’t even want to blink.
I am so goddamn tired.
“Fine,” he says. “Yeah. Bring ’em up.”
TWENTY-NINE
Teagan
I head down to tell the others they’re OK to come in. “’Bout time,” Annie mutters as they move in single file through the gate.
“Oh, by the way,” I say, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “he knows about the chopper.”
“What?” Reggie looks like she’s about to leap out of Carlos’s arms and throttle me. “You told him?”
I explain about the bodycam video. As I finish, Paul pulls Annie aside and they have a muttered conversation.
“Cops found the van too,” I tell Carlos.
He winces. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“With your prints all over it, no doubt,” Reggie murmurs. “Well, can’t be helped. Let’s go.”
In the apartment Nic has switched his black shirt for a grey UCLA hoodie. He’s turned the hall lights on and is leaning against the kitchen counter. He gives everyone stiff nods as they come in. “There’s some chips, if you want,” he says, nodding to a plastic bowl on the table which he’s filled with Doritos. “Help yourself.”
“Very kind,” murmurs Reggie.
“Nice place.” Paul looks around, swinging his arms. “Good neighbourhood too. What do you pay per square foot, you don’t mind me asking?”
Nic looks at him like he asked if he could take a shit on the carpet.
I put a hand on his shoulder, stand on tiptoe to hug him, meaning it as a thank you. He turns his head away. I hover for a moment, then drop back, not trusting myself.
“Would you mind if I rustled up something to go with the chips?” I ask him. “Been kind of a long day.”
“Chips?”
“Yeah.”
He lets out a long, slow breath. “Yeah. Get some chips. Help yourself”
I clear my throat. “No, I meant, can I cook something? To eat with the—”
“Yes. Fucking… I don’t care. Whatever. Do what you need to do.”
It might seem crazy, taking time out among all this insanity to bumble around a kitchen. But we won’t be able to do a damn thing—or at least I won’t be able to—if we don’t get some food inside us. And give me this: the one thing I can do in a crisis is cook.
Nic doesn’t have much in his fridge, but he’s got cheese, mustard, some butter and a loaf of white bread. Everything I need. I stick a pan on the electric burner as I prep for grilled cheese sandwiches, calculating how many slices of bread I’ll need to feed six of us. Of course, cooking in a home kitchen for a few people isn’t quite the same as churning out multiple meals for a full service, but when I eventually open my restaurant, I’m going to—
I stop for a second, letting the block of cheese rest against the grater. Open my restaurant? I’ll be lucky if I ever open the front door of my apartment again.
I make the sandwiches, almost attacking them. I mix the grated cheese with grain mustard, sandwiching gooey piles of it between slices of bread, buttered on the outside. Cooking is good. It distracts me not just from the events of today, but also from the world’s most awkward party, currently happening six feet away.
“Thanks again for letting us come up,” Paul says eventually.
“No problem.”
Carlos clears his throat, staring down at his shoes.
“So.” Nic says. “What’s the deal here?”
“We’re not going to be here long,” Paul says. “We’ll eat, we’ll do a little research and then we’ll be out of your hair. We just need to—”
“Um, ’scuse me.” Nic raises a finger. “That doesn’t really answer my question. I want to know exactly why the cops think you killed Steven Chase.”
Reggie glances at Paul.
“We had nothing to do with that,” Paul says slowly.
“Then why do they think you did? Why are they chasing you?”
“They spotted our company van outside the Edmonds Building last night. It was nothing, just a job we were on, a late moving assignment.”
“Really?” The familiar smile dashes across Nic’s face. “A moving assignment for… who, exactly?”
Paul shrugs. “We’ve got a client in downtown. Insurance company, if you can believe that, right next to the Edmonds Building.”
It’s amazing how smoothly the lie rolls out of him. “They had a burst water line around six o’clock last night,” he continues, smiling as if to say These things happen. “Got a call from their head guy, whole disaster, they had to move all the furniture out so the rug could be taken up and replaced. You know, I asked him if t
hey themselves had insurance, and if it was from another company, or if they insured their own stuff…”
Nic raises an eyebrow.
“Anyway, that’s what we were doing.” Paul says. “This whole thing is a case of mistaken identity.”
“Then why did Teagan tell me you were all at Annie’s for dinner last night?”
Behind him Annie mouths at me, What the fuck?
“Yeah, Teagan.” Paul’s voice shoots up an octave or two. “Why would you tell him that?” He turns back to Nic. “Whatever Teagan says we did, we really and truly were on a job.”
“Cut the shit,” Nic says.
“Excuse me?”
“There was no client, and you weren’t on a moving job. If you can’t be straight with me, you can get the hell out.”
“I can assure you—”
“Shut up.” This is the other Nic. The one his friends outside work almost never see. The one that he locks away when he’s sneaking onto a no-swim beach or wolfing down something tasty and exotic. This is the Nic that works in the twisting, convoluted world of LA’s legal system, and that Nic does not fuck around.
“There are so many holes in your story, I don’t even know where to start,” he says. He’s holding his hands together as if in prayer, fingertips resting against his nose. “I need to know why you were at the Edmonds Building, why the cops think you committed the murder and why you would run from them instead of turning yourselves in and trying to figure this all out.”
Paul opens his mouth, closes it again. It’s impossible to miss how exhausted he is. I badly want to intervene, but I don’t have the first clue what to say. I’d only make things worse.
“Nic.”
Reggie speaks quietly as if it takes real effort to say the words. “I’m truly, truly sorry you got caught up in all this. We wouldn’t have come here if we had any other choice.”
He tries to reply, but she speaks over him.
“I need you to extend us a little faith here. We’re in serious trouble, and it’s going to be very bad for everyone if we can’t get out from underneath it. We won’t be here long, and I promise, when this is over, I’ll explain everything.”