Super Series (Book 4): Supervised

by Jones, Princess

  I stood outside his apartment door for a few minutes. I wanted to knock but my flight or fight instincts were telling me to get the hell out of there. I had just about decided to bail and send him a text saying that I had diarrhea or something, when the door opened. Mike was standing there wearing an apron that said Kiss the Cook, holding a garbage bag in one hand. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “I was just about to knock,” I lied. I was just about to make a run for it.

  “You don’t have to knock, Audrey. You can just come in.” He stepped out of the doorway and pointed back inside his apartment. “Go ahead in. I’ll be back in sec. I just want to take this out.” He headed down the stairs and I went inside.

  Inside Mike’s apartment, he had already started cooking. By the time he came back, I’d thrown the beers in the fridge and cracked one open for myself. He crossed the room and gave me a quick kiss before washing his hands and resuming his cooking. “You said you liked mushrooms, right? Because we’re making chicken marsala.”

  This was the second time that day that someone had said “we” when they really meant one person. “You mean ‘we’ as ‘you,’ right?”

  “No, I meant ‘we’ as in ‘us.’”

  I groaned. “Mike, you may not have realized this about me but I can’t cook. That’s why I have all of those takeout numbers on my phone’s speed dial.”

  He laughed. “You’re going to make the salad. That counts.”

  I took a long gulp of my beer. “I’ll try. Don’t expect much, though. I once—” I was interrupted by a buzzing from my back pocket. My phone. I fished it out and tapped the screen to life. It was a text from Nathaniel.

  Do you have any new intel on El Gato?

  I quickly typed back:

  Not yet.

  I looked up to see Mike pointedly not looking at me. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Nobody,” I lied. This was becoming a thing.

  Mike went back to fussing with the food but the tension in the room was palatable. “Can’t be nobody. Someone must have sent the text.”

  “It’s Mellie, actually. You know, my friend who’s getting married? She wants to remind me about doing some dress shopping. She’s worried I’m going to be late.” Liar’s Rule Number One: Mix in a little bit of truth with your lie to make it more believable.

  “Mellie, huh?” Mike said. “It’s nice to hear about something of yours besides this building. We generally just talk about me and my stuff.”

  I nodded like I hadn’t just given him that info to distract him and I honestly planned to tell him more about my personal life. Fat chance, buddy. My phone buzzed in my hand again.

  Audrey, if you’re not going to, I don’t think I can sign off on your probation.

  Fuck you, I thought. But I texted back:

  I know. I’m working on it.

  I looked up from my phone to see Mike staring at me. “You ready for me to start on that salad?” I asked. He didn’t say anything. I put my phone back in my pocket and went over to the kitchen. Mike still didn’t say anything as I started cutting the lettuce. “Man, this is a sharp knife. So, you have any idea how much of this I should cut? I have no idea. I’m not a salad person. Not that I’m opposed to eating a salad. I’ll try anything once.” I laughed at my own joke. Mike didn’t laugh with me.

  “That isn’t Mellie, is it?” he finally asked.

  “Why would it not be Mellie? Who else could it be?” Liar’s Rule Number Two: Answer questions with questions. It puts the person you’re lying to on the defensive.

  “Answering my question with a question, huh? Nice one,” Mike chuckled. But his laugh sounded hollow. I kept forgetting that Mike was a cop. He must have been as used to identifying lies as I was to telling them. “Is that the guy from the other night? Nate?”

  “Nathaniel,” I corrected him without thinking. Liar’s Rule Number Three: When you’re dealing with someone who can tell that you’re lying, just go ahead and tell the truth. Sometimes it’s knocks them off their game. “Yeah, it’s him. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you might think it was weird,” I said, dumping the lettuce into the bowl. “I didn’t want you to think—”

  “Think what?” Mike handed me the tomatoes.

  I shrugged. “Think anything when it’s really nothing.”

  “How do you know that guy again?”

  Shit, what did I say last time? I cried in my head. Outside, I tried to keep my composure. I was violating Liar’s Rule Number Four: Remember your fucking lies. I searched my brain but couldn’t bring it back. Finally, I threw it back to him. “You don’t remember? That’s not like you.”

  Mike didn’t answer me back. He just murmured something and got out the pot for the pasta. My phone buzzed again. Nathaniel had texted me back.

  Work harder.

  I didn’t even bother to answer. I went back to my salad duties with a ball of anxiety in my stomach. I was thinking about how I had nothing to give Nathaniel on El Gato. And I was thinking about how much longer I wanted to do this with Mike. He was a great guy. He bought me candy and made me dinners. I liked him better than any of the few guys I’d dated in the past. Shit, I was eating salad for him. But I didn’t know how much further this could go. I was already having a hard time lying to him. How much longer until he realized I had a big secret?

  “Fuck!!!” My hand slipped with the knife and I cut my hand instead of the tomatoes.

  “Shit! Are you OK?” Mike rushed over to me. “Let me see.”

  “NO!” It came out harsher than I had intended but I couldn’t let him see. I cupped my left hand with my right and ran toward the bathroom. “It’s not that bad! I just need to run some cold water over it and put a band-aid on it. You have a first aid kit, right?” I babbled as I ran. I slammed the bathroom door behind me and locked it.

  In the bathroom, I uncovered my hand to see a bloody mess. It always surprised me how the smallest parts of the body bled the most. I ran the water in the sink to wash off the blood. As the water cleaned my hand up, I could see the wound clearly. My palm was clearly sliced through to the bone. I could see the white of it underneath the meat. I have got to stop injuring myself at dinners.

  On the other side of the door, Mike was turning the knob. “Audrey, open the door.”

  “I’m OK. I’m just cleaning it. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Then my phone buzzed again. “Is that your phone?” I guess he could hear it through the door and over the sound of the running water. “Are you texting that guy in there? What the hell is going on?”

  “For God’s sake Mike! I’m not texting anyone. You saw me cut myself. I’ll be out in a minute. Who the hell has such sharp knives anyway? Why can’t you have a cheap dull set like everybody else in the world?”

  “What does my cutlery have to do with anything? Open this door, Audrey, before I break it down.”

  I couldn’t open the door. If I did and he saw my hand, he’d want me to go to the hospital. And what would he say when it was completely healed by the time we got there? “Just give me some goddamn space.” Even I could hear the harsh tone in my voice. “I’ll be out in a minute. Get away from the door.”

  It must have worked. Mike didn’t say anything else and he stopped trying to open the door. A few more minutes later, my thumb was as good as new. I flexed it a few times to test it out. Then I pulled some gauze out of Mike’s first aid kit and wrapped it around my thumb. Then I added another layer for good measure. I had to make it look good for him.

  When I opened the door to the bathroom. The hallway was empty. I walked out into the living room and Mike was sitting on the couch with his hands clasped together and his chin resting on this hands. I held out my bandaged hand in front of me. “See? Good as new. Nothing to be worried about. But I gotta tell you, Mike, I’m not feeling the salad anymore. Post-traumatic stress and all of tha
t.”

  “I think we should call it a night.” His voice was quiet but his words were clear.

  “What do you mean? The food’s about ready. You don’t want to eat anymore?”

  “I don’t want to eat with you,” he clarified. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Audrey. I feel like you’re lying to me a lot. You’re hanging around with some guy. I think you just faked cutting yourself so you could go in the bathroom and text him.”

  “Come on, man!”

  “Let me see your hand.”

  I instinctively put my left hand behind my back. I couldn’t let him see it. It would look like I had been lying about the one thing I hadn’t been lying about. “Look, Mike—”

  “No.” He got up and opened his front door. “I want you to go home. Don’t come back around until you’re ready to tell the truth.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Well, that’s not true. There were a few things I could say but none of it would have made sense. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to say them anyway. So I just left. And for the first time in my life, I was too ashamed to ask for a doggy bag.

  *****

  A couple of hours after I slunk out of Mike’s apartment, there was a hard knock at my door. I opened it to see Mike standing at my door. “Did you run a red light in my car?”

  “Huh?” I was playing dumb to buy time. I heard what he said the first time.

  Mike held up an orange envelope that I recognized from when I used to have a car. It was a ticket. “So you’re saying this isn’t you?” His voice had taken on a strange quality. I was getting a taste of what he was like in the interrogation room.

  He handed the ticket to me. There was the photo the red light camera took on the bottom of the ticket, under the information about the time, date, and location. The resolution wasn’t great. The photo was fuzzy but you could still make out the driver and it was obviously me. I sighed. “Mike, I—”

  “Save it,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to strain yourself with yet another lie.” And he stalked up the stairs.

  I looked down at the ticket, again. As much as I wanted to make things right with Mike, I was kinda glad that he cut me short. I couldn’t have that fight with him at the moment. I had just realized that the red light hadn’t just caught me. The intersection must have been particularly large because the photo showed the car in front of Mike’s, too. It was the black sports car that El Gato got away in. And I could just make out the license plate in the picture.

  My fingers shook as I dialed Nathaniel’s number. It was late but he answered on the second ring. “Hello.” Even the way he answered the phone was self-assured.

  “Hey, it’s Audrey. I think I know how to find El Gato.”

  Chapter 14

  I tried to go to sleep but that was impossible. On one hand, giving that information to Nathaniel was thrilling. After losing El Gato, I needed to prove myself to him more than ever. It wasn’t just the probation thing. I wanted his approval. I wanted to be a part of this thing.

  Nathaniel’s reaction to my information was promising. I lied when he asked me where I got it because I didn’t think he would be that impressed knowing that I’d gotten a red light ticket in my “neighbor’s” car. Instead, I told him that I’d been writing down license plates of the cars while on lookout duty and I matched the plate to the type of car that I’d seen him driving. He seemed skeptical but he thanked me. He said he had some connections that could run the plate and he’d get back to me.

  On the other hand, Mike was probably not in any hurry to get back to me. I understood. I’d embarrassed him in front of everyone and I couldn’t explain why I’d disappeared liked that. And it did look like I was too busy texting my other boyfriend in the bathroom to come out. I couldn’t explain that, either. Honestly, it sucked. Maybe I wasn’t ready to commit to anything but that didn’t mean I wanted Mike to hate me.

  After stewing there for a while, I got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and took a walk. I didn’t even realize where I was going until I saw the sign for the ATM in the window of the bodega. I withdrew the money from the ATM and bought an envelope from the counter. When I got back to the building, I grabbed a pen from my own apartment and then took the stairs to 3A. I wrote I’m Sorry. Please don’t hate me on the envelope and slipped it under his door.

  The next morning, I didn’t hear from Mike. I didn’t know that I really expected to until I realized how disappointed that he hadn’t reached out. I’d already made my gesture of peace. I’d just have to wait for him to be ready to receive it.

  In the meantime, I kept myself busy by paying bills and running errands. Hy didn’t pay me a lot of money but I’d been a lot better about my finances. Less than a year before, I wasn’t even opening bills and now they were actually getting paid. I did some cleanup around the building. I did a couple of loads of laundry. I even cleaned Crash’s bowl. He darted back and forth in excitement when I put him back in there. It was the happiest I’d seen him in a long time.

  My phone rang. I dove for it and I answered it before looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Audrey, if you had a choice between lemon and chocolate, which one would you choose?”

  It was Mellie, not Mike. I tried to keep the disappointment from showing in my voice and focus on what she was saying. “Um, what? Like between a piece of chocolate and a lemon?”

  “No!” She sounded frustrated. I could hear someone talking in the background and I recognized Bridget’s voice. “Like for a cake. A wedding cake. Chocolate or lemon? Or wait. Maybe carrot?”

  “I don’t know, Mellie. I like all cake. You can’t be mad at cake. What kind of cake do you and Kevin like?”

  Before Mellie could answer, I heard Bridget in the background wailing “Chocolate is boring. Anyone can do chocolate. And it is an allergen. Have you checked everyone’s dietary restrictions?”

  Mellie ignored her and talked to me. “I don’t know. Kevin wants chocolate but he’s not even here. We’re at the cake tasting and I thought we were going to go with chocolate but Bridget is worried about it killing someone at the reception. At this point, I couldn’t give a fuck about the cake.”

  “Then get chocolate,” I said, trying to sound like someone who should be giving advice about such things. “If Kevin wants chocolate and you don’t care, get the chocolate. And then when there’s something you care about, you can say ‘I let you decide the cake so I’m going to name all our kids after the cast of original cast of Ghostbusters.’ Or whatever it is you feel like doing.”

  Mellie chuckled. “Right. Thanks, Audrey. That was the perfect answer.” As she hung up, I could still hear Bridget talking about chocolate cake in the background.

  As soon as the phone call disconnected, it buzzed again. I picked it up, thinking it was going to be Mellie, again, or maybe even Mike but it was a picture text from Nathaniel. It was slightly distorted in the way that it looks when you take a picture of a computer screen. I could also see that the picture was part of a driver’s license with the picture being centered and the rest being cropped out.

  Another text following almost immediately:

  Is this the man you saw in the car?

  I squinted hard and looked at the picture closely. A person’s driver’s license didn’t exactly cover their essence. Nobody looks their self after sitting in a waiting room for two hours, dealing with red tape and paperwork. It was a young Latino guy, clean-shaven, with longish hair and a cocky look on his face. He couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-five. He did kinda resemble the artist rendering that Nathaniel had passed out the other night. I closed my eyes and tried to remember back to that night in front of the warehouse. I definitely got a good look at him when our eyes locked in that moment. But was this him?

  Well?

  I took a deep breath and just made a decision.

  That’s him.
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  For a moment, I thought maybe he didn’t get the text. But then my phone buzzed again.

  Good work. I’m picking you up tonight at two. We’re going to get this guy.

  *****

  I’m on the roof.

  Nathaniel’s text woke me up from my sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be any use to him that night unless I got some sleep. So I struggled into my Super suit and lay down on my couch for a nap.

  For some reason, it never occurred to me that Nathaniel was going to fly me to the mission that night. Looking back, I also couldn’t imagine he’d pick me up in a car, either. I didn’t even know if he owned a car. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. But when I got that text from Nathaniel, I jumped up from the couch, threw a hoodie over my Super suit, and headed to the roof.

  When I opened the roof door, Nathaniel had his back turned to me, looking out into the horizon. He was wearing his own Super suit. It was sleek, black, and hugged him in all of the right places. With his silhouette against the city backdrop, he looked like a comic book page come to life. “Hey, Nathaniel.”

  He turned to me. He looked a lot happier than he had the last time I saw him. He actually smiled at me. “Tonight it’s just you and me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I’d already sent the others out on something else when my contact got back with the registered owner to that plate you gave me. But I think we can do this alone. El Gato, or Lenny DeLeon as he is better known, has been hiding out since the warehouse bust. His financial records show he has a house in the Flushing area of Queens.”

  He was talking to me as if I were an equal. It was a complete 180 from the other night. I tried to nod and ask smart questions. “How do you know that he’s there? It might be in his name but he’s hiding out somewhere else.”

  “Good question. You’re right. El Gato didn’t get to where he is by being stupid. Which is why I wanted you to confirm that the person who registered that car was the same one you saw that night. Then I did a bit of surveillance on today. Based on that, it looks like it’s just him there, with a revolving door of women coming in and out.”