by Jim Eldridge
She crawled over and typed in the code, then swung the door open.
Everything was still there. Her money, her passport, her handbag.
She grabbed her handbag and pulled it out, but as she did so it tipped, spilling its contents on the floor. The usual stuff, and her audition paper, but what was that envelope? She didn’t remember that.
She lifted it up. It had Shannon’s name on it. This had to be the note Shannon had phoned about! What was so important about it?
She opened the envelope and scanned the note as well as she could with her head banging. As she read the words Shannon’s mum had written she thought, Oh Christ! Oh fucking Christ!
She pushed the note back into the envelope. I have to get this to Shannon, she thought. It was then she noticed the small piece of glass gleaming on the carpet. No, not glass.
She picked it up.
It was a diamond. A perfect little diamond.
How had it got there? Brett certainly hadn’t brought it, that cheap bastard! And if he’d seen it, he’d have taken it for sure. It must have fallen out of her bag, along with the note from Shannon’s mum. But how had it got in her bag? She didn’t have any diamonds on her. She hadn’t bought any during last night’s shopping.
She sat on the bed, the diamond and the envelope in her hands. Two problems. No, three. Brett was another problem. He’d fucked her and robbed her. He’d cheated her. Well, she’d deal with him herself. But first, Shannon’s letter. She dipped into her bag and found the card she wanted. Big Larry.
Big Larry met her in the lobby of the hotel and she gave him the envelope, with Shannon’s name already on it and Kerrys’s address added. Best send it to Kerrys; she’d make sure it got to Shannon.
‘This note really needs to get to London,’ she told him.
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it myself personally, but I won’t be getting there till tomorrow afternoon. That OK?’
‘That’s brilliant.’ She leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘You’re a good guy, Big Larry.’
He grinned.
‘One o’ the best.’
As soon as he’d gone she went to the desk in the lobby. She’d spent time in her room, scrolling through Brett’s emails. He’d been careless. One told her he lived on Bedford Avenue, in Brooklyn. That had been in the early days of their exchanges, when they’d just been introducing themselves to one another. Then later they’d talked about favourite things: animals, clothes, colours, numbers. ‘I like 1028,’ Brett had told her. ‘It’s my door number.’
Now Cass handed the desk clerk the sheet of paper on which she’d written the address: 1028, Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn.
‘Can you tell me how I can get to this place, please?’ she asked.
The desk clerk looked at the address and nodded, happy to help a guest.
‘No problem,’ he said.
21
Number 1028, Bedford Avenue was a brownstone apartment block. As Cass stood on the pavement outside it she felt butterflies in her stomach. What was she thinking of, confronting the creep like this? She was in a foreign city, his city. He was a thief — he was sure to have criminal friends. Maybe he was even armed! The sensible thing would be to call the police, let them deal with it.
But then the feeling of anger filled her at the way she’d been used and abused. Conned into having sex. And not just having sex, but sex for the first time. It should have been special, with someone special, someone she loved, who loved her. Instead this creep had sneaked away her virginity, then doped her and stolen her shopping. Expensive shopping! She wanted to see him, see his face when he opened his door to her. See his shock. She couldn’t recover her virginity, but she’d sure as hell make sure she got her shopping back.
She went into the building and checked the names on the board. There he was. An apartment on the third floor.
As she went up the stairs she wondered what she’d do if he wasn’t in. Wait for him? Where? If she waited outside his apartment he’d see her and run off. And how long could she wait? Hours?
Say he’d just run off and sold her shopping and wasn’t coming back for days?
She reached the door of his apartment. There was a peephole. She moved to one side so she was securely out of his line of vision and knocked. She heard the sound of movement from inside the apartment, the door being unlocked, and then it swung open and she was looking at a boy she’d never seen before. He was young, short and plain, with big thick glasses and unruly fair hair. He looked like a geek.
The boy knew her though. He gaped at her, shocked.
‘Cassandra?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Cassandra stared at him.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
The geeky boy put on a smile. It made him look even worse.
‘Calm down now,’ he urged.
‘Who are you?’ repeated Cass, her voice an angry shout.
The boy gulped, and forced another smile.
‘I’m Brett,’ he said.
Brett?
Cass stood there, shocked, her brain reeling. This was Brett? Really Brett?
The geeky boy forced his smile even wider, a smile of appeasement, hoping to defuse her anger. All it did was make Cass even angrier. She hadn’t been taken in by just one bastard; there had been two of them messing with her!
Smack!
Before she knew what she was doing, Cass’s bunched fist shot out and hit the geek hard right between his eyes. The geek’s mouth dropped open and his eyes went up into his head, and he crashed backwards into the apartment, out cold.
Cass took a look both ways along the corridor in case anyone had seen her. There was no one about.
She stepped into the apartment, and then stopped, shocked. There were hundreds of pictures of her pasted on the walls. Not just the photos she had emailed Brett, but photos taken from inside her apartment!
Moving swiftly, she hauled the unconscious geeky boy right inside the apartment, then slammed the door shut. She looked at him lying on the floor, and a second’s panic hit her. Was he dead? Maybe he had a thin skull and her punch had killed him.
She knelt down beside him and listened. No, he was still breathing. He was just unconscious.
Well, in that case she didn’t want him being free when he woke up. She was wondering what to tie him up with, when she remembered the cable ties Kerrys had given her. She snatched one from her bag and quickly fixed him to the old weight-bearing girder in the centre of the apartment. The iron girder had been made to be part of the design of the room. Now it was a very safe and secure jail for him, his wrists cable-tied behind it.
She was safe, for the moment. But where was the other one? The one who’d called himself Brett? The one who’d screwed her and stolen her shopping?
She looked at the apartment. Once she got past the images of her plastered everywhere, she saw the rest: the models, the action figures, the movie posters. This had to be the biggest geek of all time, and he’d fooled her into coming all the way to New York to get screwed by him!
There was a groan. The geek was coming round. Cass moved away from him, sat down and watched him as his eyelids flickered and then opened. His mouth dropped open as he saw her and he went to get up and move towards her, but then he became aware of the cable ties tying him to the girder, and a look of panic crossed his face.
‘Please don’t do this!’ he begged.
Cass glared at him, tight-lipped.
‘So what you did to me was fine but I can’t do this?’ she hissed, furious.
‘Please . . . I love you.’
Love? Cass looked at the geeky boy. At Brett, but she found it impossible to think of him as Brett. Brett was handsome, cool. Brett loved her, or he’d said he did. This man was just . . . Eugh! Cass felt her skin crawl as she looked at him.
‘Love?’ echoed Cass sarcastically. She shook her head and looked around the room at the hundreds of images of her everywhere. ‘You’re just . . . obsessed.’
‘No, it’s love,’ insisted the geek, straining at the cable ties. ‘Real love. You’ve got to know that. All those emails, all those loving words. That was me!’
‘So why the scam? Why the other guy?’
The geeky Brett hung his head and said shame-facedly, ‘Would you have really done what you did with him if it had been me? If I sent you a real photo of me, would you have turned up?’ He raised his head and looked at her in anguish. ‘No one turns up when they see what I look like.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Well, one girl did, and she got straight on the next plane back.’ He looked like he was about to cry. ‘I just wanted to see you. He said he’d fix that.’ He looked at her again, his expression appealing to her. ‘He was only supposed to take pictures.’
Pictures! The word sent alarm bells ringing through Cass. Pictures of her naked. Maybe pictures of her being screwed!
‘Where are they?’ she demanded.
‘He hasn’t brought them yet,’ said the geek.
‘But he’s bringing them here?’
The geeky Brett nodded miserably.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A few hours, maybe. He goes at his own speed, does his own thing.’
‘Not any more,’ snapped Cass. She picked up the geek’s phone and shoved it under his chin. ‘What’s his number?’
22
While Cass waited impatiently for fake Brett to turn up with the pictures, she checked the apartment in case there were any other unpleasant surprises lurking about. Geeky Brett sat on the floor, tied up and miserable. Every now and then he begged her to let him go, and each time Cass glared back at him with such venom that finally he shut up.
She checked her watch. Fake Brett was taking a long time. Not that there’d been anything suspicious in his voice when geeky Brett had called him and urged him to hurry over with the pictures.
‘I’ll be there, dude,’ he’d said, his voice sounding so smug that Cass had wanted to shriek abuse at it. But that wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction she wanted. She wanted him here. Tied to the girder like his geeky friend. She already had the cable ties waiting. She wanted revenge!
She flicked on the TV. A news anchorwoman looked out at her from the screen, her face and tone serious. The caption said ‘Global Witness’.
‘The biggest diamond heist ever still reverberates. The authorities want people to report anyone looking to sell black-market diamonds. It’s estimated that one in six diamonds is a conflict diamond . . .’
Cass switched the TV off and turned her attention to Brett’s laptop. The wallpaper was a picture of her, but not one she’d seen before. She clicked on, and saw a folder labelled: ‘Cassandra home movies’. She looked at geeky Brett, a question on her face, and he hung his head in awkward shame.
Cass opened the folder and clicked on the QuickTime movie files, opening first one, then another, then another. They were all from inside her apartment from her webcam. In one she was sitting at the computer with just a robe on, in another she could be seen walking around her apartment, but near enough to her computer for the webcam to pick her up.
‘How did you get these?’ she asked, appalled but at the same time awed as she watched.
‘I hacked into your computer,’ said geeky Brett. ‘That got me into your CCTV system.’
Suddenly the horror of it all overcame Cass. She had been stalked in her own home for ages. She’d been watched, like some poor rabbit, while these two predators groomed her, working out their plan to fuck her and rob her, strip her of everything. Eyes blinded by tears, she turned angrily on geeky Brett.
‘I fell in love, you arsehole!’ she raged.
‘Yes,’ said Brett. ‘With me.’
Fury took Cass over. She kicked geeky Brett in the shin and he let out a howl of pain. She didn’t care. She began to tear down the images of herself from the walls, scattering them on the floor in her rage. It was the sound of her phone ringing that stopped her. She looked at the display, and to her surprise it said ‘Home’. It was Kerrys.
‘Kerrys?’
‘Hi, Cass. Long story, but I’m kinda stuck in your panic room.’
Cass heard the words but couldn’t immediately take them in. Stuck in her panic room? How? Why?
‘What the fuck are you doing there?’ she demanded, bewildered.
‘I stole your keys,’ said Kerrys.
‘You stole . . . ?!’
‘I need the code to get out.’
‘4-3-2-1,’ said Cass automatically.
‘That’s it?’ said Kerrys’s voice, incredulous. ‘That’s a stupid code.’
‘Yeah, a stupid code for a stupid fucking girl!’ raged Cass. ‘I’m gonna kill you when I get back.’
Furious, Cass hung up. Kerrys had stolen her keys! It must have happened in the Cappuccino, when everything had fallen out of her bag. And if her stupid mother hadn’t been in her apartment waiting for her, with the door left open, she’d have found it out when she’d got home and this wouldn’t be happening. Shit! Some friend!
She stormed over to the laptop, clicked on the live feed to her webcam and sat down, stunned at what she saw. It looked like there was a party going on in her place, and a pretty hectic one at that. The sound of the door buzzer jerked her out of her state of shock. Brett!
She scooped up a heavy statue of Lara Croft and just made it to hide behind the door in time, because it swung open and the other Brett walked in, Mr Cool, Mr Handsome, Mr fucking photographs of her! He stopped when he saw geeky Brett tied to the girder, the smile wiped off his face. Mr Cool heard a noise behind him and started to turn, but as he did Cass raised the Lara Croft statuette high and brought it down hard on the top of his head.
He crumpled to the floor in an unconscious heap.
I’m getting good at knocking boys out, Cass thought ruefully.
She dragged the unconscious Brett over to the girder and tied his wrists behind it with the cable ties, just like the geek. Then she went through his pockets until she found his mobile phone. The photos of her were easy to find. Tears filled her eyes as she looked at them. These were supposed to be the pictures of her ultimate happiness; instead they made her feel dirty and used. One after another she deleted them, barely able to see what she was doing because of the tears welling up in her eyes.
Her phone beeping caught her attention. Not Kerrys again! No, it was her alarm, to remind her of the time. Of her audition with Sir Jago Larofsky in uptown Manhattan. Which was due to take place now. And instead she was here in Brooklyn.
‘Oh, shit!’ groaned Cass.
23
By the time Cass jumped out of the cab outside the Larofskys’ smart townhouse in Uptown Manhattan she was running an hour late. It had taken forever to get a cab, and then traffic had been a killer. But the main thing was, she was here. And surely, when Cass explained the reason she was late, he’d be understanding. OK, she couldn’t tell him about being screwed by the wrong Brett, that wouldn’t show her in a good light. But surely having her shopping stolen . . .
She hurried up the steps and rang the bell. Then she began to try to calm herself down, taking deep breaths. She had to put on her best ever performance if she was going to persuade Sir Jago to take her on as his pupil. When she played today she had to be brilliant. And for that, she needed to be calm.
She took another deep breath. The door opened, and there he was, standing in front of her: Sir Jago Larofsky. With him was a woman, obviously his wife. Both of them were wearing outdoor coats.
‘Sir Jago, I’m so sorry I’m late,’ said Cass, doing her best to come across as humble and apologetic as she could possibly be. This wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill piano teacher, this was Sir Jago Larofksy, and she had to make sure he listened to her and loved her playing.
Larosfky looked down his nose at her, the expression on his face clearly unwelcoming. His wife looked equally unimpressed.
‘Cassandra Phillips?’ asked Larofsky, his tone definitely unfriendly.
He held up his hand to silence her.
‘Before you attempt any story that is supposed to tug at my heartstrings, I have a rule here that I have kept to for the last three decades,’ he told her. ‘As you young people say, if one snoozes, one loses.’
‘But I wasn’t snoozing . . . !’ said Cass desperately, imploring him to listen.
Larofsky just looked at Cass coldly.
‘You’ve missed your opportunity,’ he told her flatly. ‘Now, my wife and I are on our way to dinner. Please excuse us.’
With that the couple stepped out of the house, pulled the door shut and walked down the steps past Cass to the kerb. Larofsky had barely made a signal, but already a cab was pulling up for them. They got in and drove away.
Cass stood on the steps, her mouth open in shock. Gone! The official reason she’d come to New York, gone, just like that.
Fuck, what was she going to tell her mother?
As Cass walked into the brownstone in Brooklyn she was raging with fury inside. She knew whose fault it was that everything had gone wrong. The two Bretts. OK, only one of them was Brett, but she had no interest in finding out what the other one was called. She just wanted to kill them both.
She’d come all this way to experience True Love and capture the prize of being selected by Jago Larofksy to be his pupil, and she’d lost both in less than twenty-four hours. Thanks to Mr Cool and Handsome Thief and the Geek. Well, this was where they got what was coming to them.
She kicked open the door of the apartment in her rage and stormed in. The Bretts were both where she’d left them: on the floor, tied to the girder. Cass stomped over to them and kicked them both hard twice, making them howl in pain.
‘What did you do to me?’ she raged at them. ‘What did you do?’