As Ravinder spun, looking wildly around the room to see where Roni’d gone, Hax looked around trying to find the distorted area in his vision that’d tell him where she actually was.
Saying, “Where the hell did she go?!” Ravinder bent and looked under the bed. Then he walked to the closet and pulled open the door, though he slowed on the way. Hax could tell his dad realized in transit that there was no way Roni could have walked over to the closet and gotten inside without his noticing, especially since the door squeaked.
When Ravinder turned back away from the closet, Roni was standing in the middle of the room again. Ravinder’s eyes widened, “How did you do that?”
Roni said, “I think it’s… kind of like telepathy. Except all I seem to be able to do is to make people ignore me.”
“Ignore you?”
“Yeah, it isn’t like I’m just invisible. I can make it so people don’t hear me or notice my touch either. It’s as if I can obscure all their senses.” She tilted her head and made a little face, “Though I haven’t actually tested to see if I can keep people from tasting or smelling me.”
“Wait a minute,” their dad said, obviously having a hard time processing the whole idea. Hax started to say something but, shaking his hand, Ravinder put up his hand and said, “Wait…” Turning toward Roni, he said, “Can you do that again?” but she was already gone. A stunned expression on his face, Ravinder glanced at Hax, then looked around the room for his daughter. Evidently forgetting, or not believing, that his daughter was actually still in the room with them, Ravinder gave Hax a dubious look, “Do you believe she can actually do this?”
Hax gave his father an incredulous look and waved a hand to slowly encompass the room, “Dad, she just disappeared right in front of you. And don’t forget, she’s still here in the room listening to whatever you say!”
“Yeah Dad,” Roni said from just behind Ravinder. Despite knowing she could do it, Hax still found it disconcerting that she hadn’t been there, but now she was, without his noticing her coming or going.
He obviously didn’t find it as disconcerting as his dad who’d spun to face Roni when she spoke, looking extremely disquieted. He stood staring at his daughter for well over a minute, then grudgingly said, “Okay, I guess I have to accept that you can do this invisibility thing. But still, picking pockets? If Nick was to notice you doing it and lash out…” Ravinder stopped and gaped as Roni lifted her hands to display their contents.
Ravinder’s wallet, keys, comb, cell phone, and watch.
Roni tossed them on the bed. “I assure you, I haven’t had some gypsy teach me how to lift things unnoticed off of people. I just think to myself how I don’t want you to be aware of what I’m doing, then I do it. I actually twisted your wrist all around trying to get that watch off, its buckle’s hard to work.”
Hax found himself staring as well. Somehow, he felt like he should have noticed Ravinder’s wrist moving, even if Ravinder didn’t. Though that feeling didn’t make any sense. After all, he hadn’t noticed Roni standing there moving it.
Ravinder reached out and pulled the chair away from Roni’s desk. Dropping heavily into it, he said, “I don’t… I don’t understand…”
“Neither do I,” Roni said, sitting down on her bed and studying her father.
They just sat there for a while. Hax had no idea what they were thinking, but obviously Ravinder was just trying to process the whole thing. He wondered if Roni was just letting him contemplate what he’d learned, or if she was trying to figure out something as well.
Eventually, Ravinder slowly shook his head, then suddenly looked around like he’d just woken up. “I’ve got to get back to the store.” He turned to Roni, “I don’t think you should…” he shook his head disbelievingly, “be doing this. It’s too dangerous. But we need to tell your mother about it and see what she thinks.”
He got up, walked out the door of Roni’s room and down the stairs. This left Hax and Roni sitting there staring at one another. Hax grinned at his sister, “I don’t suppose you’d give me a couple thousand?”
Roni grinned ruefully, “You obviously don’t know your own father. He’s got the money.”
Hax turned to look after his father. “I guess he does his own disappearing acts.”
Roni snorted. She said, “What did you want?”
“Huh?”
“When you came in here and broke open my little secret. You looked like there was something you wanted to tell me.”
“Oh, yeah. I wanted to tell you about Vito and Hallie.” He did, and Roni also looked dismayed about what was happening to Hallie.
But she didn’t have any ideas for solving the problem.
As Hax was leaving her room, she said, “You know, if the law worked like it was supposed to, Vito’d be in prison and Hallie wouldn’t have a problem.”
Hax nodded. It was true, that was what was supposed to happen. But he was learning that “supposed to happen,” and “did happen,” could be unrelated.
That night, as soon as Ravinder sat down at the dinner table, he turned to Hax, “Have you or your sister talked to your mother yet?”
Hax lifted an eyebrow, “About?”
Ravinder looked irritated, “About what she can do!”
Tansey set their dishes on the table. Sounding interested, she said, “What can Roni do?”
“Become…” Ravinder paused, as if he didn’t really want to say it, but then finished, “invisible.”
As Ravinder said that, Tansey had turned and shouted frustratedly up the stairs, “Roni! Dinner!” She turned back to her husband, “She can do what?”
“Become invisible.”
Tansey gave Ravinder a curious look, then looked at Hax as if she was wondering what the joke was. “Invisible?”
“Invisible,” Roni said, from her chair at the table. The chair she hadn’t been sitting in a moment before.
Tansey reacted by jerking back away from Roni, “Oh! I didn’t see you.”
Roni smirked at her, “Exactly.”
Tansey turned to look questioningly at her husband, then looked back at Roni—who was gone. She stared at the empty chair for a moment, then breathed, “My God…” She looked back at Ravinder, “What does this mean?” She glanced back at Roni’s chair, where Roni was once again visible, “When did this happen?”
Roni said, “I guess I’ve been able to do it for a long time. You know how I was always so good at hide and seek when I was little? I just thought I was good at hiding behind stuff and that people weren’t very good at seeing me, even when they should have. But it turns out… that I can hide right in the middle of the room. I don’t have to be behind anything at all.”
Tansey blinked, “When did you figure this out?”
Roni shrugged, “A few months ago.”
Tansey looked suspiciously at her husband, “And I’m just learning about this now, because?”
“Because I just learned about it today,” he sighed, looking frustrated. He’d dug in his pocket, “When I asked her where she’d gotten this.” He laid the big wad of bills on the table.
Their mother stared goggle-eyed at the money. After a moment, she said, “Where did that come from?”
When no one else answered, Roni said, “I picked Nick Castano’s pocket while he was making his rounds to extort people.”
“But…” Tansey stared disbelievingly at her daughter. “But that’s crazy!” She looked to her husband for backup.”
Ravinder said, “Yeah, I agree. Those guys are psychopaths.” He looked at each member of his family in turn, then said, “But, somebody needs to do something about them. The police are petrified, and probably some of the cop’s upper-level people have been bribed. They aren’t going to do it. You guys probably know that someone from the FBI was looking into it last year or so but wound up dead.” He shook his head sadly, “Essentially anyone who investigates, or protests, or tries to publicize what the Castanos are doing turns up dead, and that pretty effectively supp
resses such activities.” He studied his wife. “I’ve had a little bit longer to think about this than you have and I’ve started to wonder if Roni isn’t the only person who might be able to stop them.”
Tansey looked at her husband with a horrified expression. “You want our teenage daughter to take on the mob?!”
“She’s already in danger!” He looked at Roni, “I don’t know the details, but I know you’ve had some run-ins with Nick Castano, right?”
Roni nodded, but Hax could tell she could hardly believe her father thought she could take on the Castanos. Hax also didn’t think Roni wanted to explain how she’d been all doe-eyed about Nick Castano before she figured out what a jerk he was. Or what his family did. Then Roni’s expression firmed, “Yeah, and I hate them. I’d do anything to bring them to justice.”
Ravinder turned back to Tansey and continued, “And, those guys are ruining her life. Remember when we were hoping to send her to college? She’s got the grades. She could probably get some scholarships. But now we need her to work the store just so we can make ends meet.”
“So, she can hide from them,” Tansey said slowly. “And pick their pockets. That’s hardly going to run them out of town.”
Ravinder thumped the stack of bills, “She picked their pockets for nearly $22,000! A crime ring like theirs runs on cash. Lots of it. If they run out of cash… they aren’t going to be able to bribe people in the government and police. They won’t be able to pay the guys who do the dirty work.”
“You think that if Roni picks their pockets a few more times their whole organization’s going to implode?” Tansey said incredulously.
“I think it’s more like loosening the lug nuts on one of their wheels. If that wheel comes off the truck might wreck.”
“Or, in their case, the Castanos might tighten the nuts back up and kill whoever loosened them! I’ll bet they’re already being more careful about where they put their money.” Tansey turned to Roni, “When you say ‘you picked his pocket,’ what pocket was it?”
Roni spoke slowly, as if she was recognizing the problem also. “He had all the envelopes stuffed in his outer jacket pocket. It was really easy to pull them out.” She shrugged, “If he puts them in some kind of inside pocket, it could be a lot harder.”
As they were all digesting that, Ravinder said, “Earlier you said you’d spent some of the money on a disguise. What do you need a disguise for? I mean, if no one can see you?”
“Yeah, well that’s another problem,” Roni said, looking around at her family. “You know how I told you that I’m not really invisible, I’m just somehow able to make you not notice me?”
Hax shrugged while their parents both nodded.
Roni lifted an eyebrow, “I can’t tell video cameras not to notice me.”
Everyone looked puzzled. Ravinder said slowly, “So… If someone’s, like filming in the area where you pick a pocket, they’d be able to see you in the viewfinder or something?”
“I’m not sure. I think they still wouldn’t notice me, since I’m there telling people not to see me. But when they go back and watch the video, then they’ll be able to see me.”
“I don’t understand, surely the Castanos don’t film themselves going around taking people’s money.”
“No, but a lot of places have security cameras.” She waved down the stairs. “We’ve got a couple in our store. I’ve been keeping an eye out lately and I’ve realized there are a lot more of those kinds of cameras around than you might expect. The police routinely go through the video record after a crime to try to find out who did it, and as you’ve already mentioned, they’re in the Castanos’ pocket.”
Tansey said, “You think the Castanos will go to the police about being pickpocketed of their extortion money?!”
“No, but they know the security cameras are there. If they get their pockets picked, they don’t have to be too bright to go look at the vids from the area where it happened so they can see who did it.” Roni shrugged, “The storeowners aren’t going to refuse to let the Castanos look at their security videos. So, even though people can’t see me when I do it, I still want to wear a disguise to pick the Castanos’ pockets. Then they won’t be able to figure out who I was when they look at the videos.”
“What kind of disguise?”
“I bought a hoodie and a scarf, but I haven’t used them yet.” She shrugged, “The first time I picked his pocket I wore my balaclava and a sheet.” She turned to her mother, “I’ve been wondering if I might do better with some kind of heavy, light-colored makeup?”
Tansey shook her head almost violently, “No! No, you’re not going to do this!”
Ravinder waved his hands calmly, “Whatever we do, this isn’t something to be rushed into. If—and I’m not saying we will, I’m saying if—if we do this, it’ll be after a lot more thought. For now, we should eat our dinner before it gets completely cold. I think we shouldn’t even talk about it until Saturday. We can all think about it and maybe ask Roni a few questions about how it works, but don’t talk about what we might do.”
Hax felt surprised that his dad was talking like the family would take a vote. Usually, he just decided, and they all did things his way.
Tansey was looking at her husband like he’d grown another head. “What d’you mean ‘we’? Your daughter’s the one who’s going to be at risk if she does anything like this.”
“We’ll all be at risk. If the Castanos find out, they’ll…” He left the rest of that thought unsaid. “And if Roni does do it, I’m hoping we can figure out some ways that the rest of us can make it safer for her.”
Chapter 5
After her dad’s suggestion that they all think about how they might use Roni’s strange ability to do something about the Castanos, Roni’d decided she should research just how criminal organizations made their money. It seemed like it had to be important to understand how the Castanos’ business worked if the Buchry’s were going to mess with it. One of the first things she learned was that people like the Castanos needed a way to launder their money. As she understood it, they needed a way to make their illegally gained cash or “dirty money” appear to be clean and legally acquired.
Because of that, most organized crime people made it a practice to own various cash businesses like nightclubs, strip joints, casinos, parking garages and laundromats. Places where they could fold their dirty money into the legitimate income stream and claim that all the money had actually come from honest cash sales. She hadn’t considered the possibility that the Castanos might do other things besides steal money from merchants. Gambling was illegal in their state, so there weren’t any casinos in the city, but when she asked around, she heard rumors that the Castanos owned several nightclubs.
It being Friday night, she’d decided to go explore one of the nightclubs to see what went on there. It’d be good to understand how the Castanos laundered their money so she’d be able to tell the FBI about it.
If the FBI ever seemed like it might intervene.
It’d also be nice to know how money was laundered because she actually had some illegally gained money of her own to clean up.
Suspecting that her parents wouldn’t approve, she took a nap and set her alarm so she could go after everyone was asleep.
Nick walked past the people standing in line outside Petroglyph, one of the Castanos’ three nightclubs. Of course, he could easily have gone in the back door, but he liked walking past the losers who had to stand in line to get in. Feeling their jealous eyes on him as he stepped up to the bouncer and was waved on into the club gave him a rush.
Besides, he had a distinctive new blue jacket that the girls ought to recognize. Some of them would remember him going by and realize he was a big dog. They’d try to attract his attention later.
That gave him a rush too.
The bouncers should’ve checked his ID, but they knew he was only twenty. Since they’d have to let him in anyway, they didn’t bother checking it. He walked into the club, f
eeling on top of the world with a swagger in his step. His eyes roamed the girls to see what kind of talent the club had on tap tonight.
Linda and Janet finally got in the club. As they dropped off their stuff at the coat check, Janet looked around the club and said, “What’s with all the crude drawings on the walls? My little brother could do better.”
Linda looked around, and feeling a little superior, said, “They’re supposed to be cave drawings, scratched in the stone. You know, ‘petroglyphs’?”
Recognizing the name of the club, Janet said, “Oh, cool.”
They made their way to the bar, unconsciously moving in rhythm with the heavy beat pounding from the dance floor.
As they waited for their drinks, Linda turned to Janet and gave her a slight nudge, “There’s that guy who walked past the line on the way in. Do you know who he is?”
Janet took her drink and sipped it as she turned the direction Linda was looking. She recognized the jacket. “No, but I like the way he looks. And,” she winked at Linda, “he must be rolling in cash.”
“Let’s go stand in that section.”
An hour or so had passed. Janet and Linda had found a standing table, nursed their drinks and danced together a couple of times. They’d gotten rid of one creepy guy who’d come by and tried to talk to them, but were starting to worry that nobody interesting would replace him.
Linda was watching the dance floor and feeling a little disappointed when she heard someone talking behind her. It was a little hard to understand because of the music, but she turned and saw it was the handsome guy in the blue jacket. Evidently he’d spoken to Janet because she was smiling up at him. He waved at their half-empty drinks and raised an eyebrow. Linda smiled and nodded. With a little irritation, she noticed Janet already had her hand on his arm. Linda moved closer herself.
The Girl They Couldn’t See (Blind Spot #1) (Blind Spot Series) Page 14