by Cassia Leo
A group of men in expensive suits had gathered in the far corner. They all laughed and gestured raucously, most of them still holding empty cocktail glasses in their hands. A bartender was cleaning up behind the bar as janitorial staff picked up trash off the floors and empty wine glasses off tables.
A gentleman who looked like a waiter in a starched white shirt and black slacks approached me. “Excuse me, sir, but you’ll have to leave. We’re locking up soon.”
I nodded at him. “I’m just here to pick up my boss, Michael Becker.”
His eyes widened a bit at the mention of Michael’s name, then he nodded. “Of course, sir. Can you please tell him that we were supposed to clear the building and lock up by midnight?”
“Will do,” I said, continuing toward the corner.
Michael Becker stood at the center of the group of men, telling a story or joke that had the other men enthralled with laughter. I walked slowly toward the group, giving Becker time to finish his tale before I interrupted. When I was within a few yards, he noticed me and insisted a few of the men make way as I approached.
“Good evening, sir,” I said, nodding at Becker as I glanced around the group, taking in everyone’s face. “I’ve been informed by the university that they will be closing the doors to Vanderbilt Hall very soon. We should get going, sir.”
“Gentlemen, this is my bodyguard, Daniel…Daniel…? What’s your last name again, Daniel?” Becker said, draping his arm across my shoulders.
“Meyers, sir.”
He smiled as he tightened his arm around my neck and pointed at me with his other hand, which was still precariously holding a half-empty cocktail glass. “Good-looking kid. If…and I mean if I had a daughter, Daniel would get my blessing. Everyone knows it’s aesthetics that matter above all else. Right, Meyers?”
I politely wriggled out of his grasp. “Of course. We should get going, sir.”
Becker cocked an eyebrow as he stared into his glass. “Yes, aesthetics matter, but so does power. Did any of you see my i8 in the lot?” he asked, looking around at the other men. “That beauty is power personified—357 horsepower, to be exact. Wanna have a look?”
The men, who seemed to be in some sort of drunken trance, all voiced their agreement with slurred variations of “Fuck, yeah.”
I trailed closely behind the group, nodding at the cleaning staff in a modest gesture of apology and reassurance that we would soon be out of their way. After a bit of redirecting, I herded the men toward the exit leading to the parking lot on the 3rd Street side of the building.
The balmy July heat had melted into the earth, leaving behind a sizzling promise of trouble that hung in the air. I hoped the rest of these men were taking taxis or calling for a ride, because none of them seemed sober enough to drive, except Michael.
I had worked for Becker for less than a month, but I’d already seen him plastered on at least two occasions. When he was drunk, he had a very obvious tell. It was my job to notice these things. When Michael was drunk, he forgot people’s first names.
It made sense, considering he probably knew a thousand Bobs, Tims, Richards, Johns, and Daniels. Last names were often more distinct. Either Michael wasn’t aware of his own shortcomings when he was tipsy or, more likely, he was signaling to me that he wasn’t really drunk. He was putting on a show for the guys.
Or he was using reverse psychology on me, trying to make me believe he wasn’t drunk when he was actually wasted. Fuck. This job was becoming more complicated by the minute.
It was a beautiful summer night in New York. A few of the men closed their eyes and tilted their heads back to savor the fresh air on their faces. I shook my head as I led the way to Becker’s new BMW i8. The few with their eyes open either whistled or let out various curious words at the sight of the crystal-white electric sports car with the blue accent stripe.
They discussed the virtues of the i8 over the Tesla for a few minutes as I kept a vigilant watch over the various entrances to the parking lot. A group of drunk, unarmed, presumably rich assholes was a robbery waiting to happen. Finally, the men said their good-byes and wandered off into various directions, muttering about their intentions to catch cabs and Ubers. Obviously, these men were not as well off as I had assumed.
Michael held his hand out to me palm up. “Key fob.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, sir. Are you telling me you want to drive?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Meyers. You know I’m not drunk. This is my car. Now, give me the key fob or tomorrow you can look for a job elsewhere.”
I looked him in the eye, waiting for him to tell me he was kidding, but he clearly wasn’t. “Sir, I really don’t think that’s a good idea. You may not be drunk, but you’ve—”
“If you don’t give me that key, so help me I will call the police and charge you with theft.”
I chuckled. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m pretty sure the police will understand why I’m not letting you get in that driver’s seat.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe they’ll believe the rich asshole over the poor schmuck. You want to take that chance, Meyers?”
I gritted my teeth as I realized he really wasn’t drunk, but that didn’t mean he was sober enough to drive. I was fucked either way.
“When was the last time you drove this thing?” I asked, slipping my hand into the pocket of my slacks to retrieve the key fob.
“I drove it last week!” he replied impatiently, glancing in the direction of the sidewalk, where one of his former law school cronies was watching our exchange.
I handed over the key fob and he snatched it out of my hand. “Just try not to kill us,” I muttered under my breath as I walked around the back of the car toward the passenger side.
“What did you say?” he asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.
“Nothing, sir,” I said, getting into the passenger seat and shutting the door. “Please feel free to pull over if you get tired or just don’t feel like driving anymore.”
“Jesus Christ. Give it a rest, already. I’m fine!”
I buckled my seat belt and watched as he tossed the key fob into the cup holder and pressed the START button on the dashboard. The car didn’t start, and he shook his head as he seemed to remember he needed to press down on the brake as he pushed the START button.
Once the car was idling, I gently reminded him to put his seat belt on, but he waved off my suggestion as he lowered his window to let in some fresh air. I tried to think of what, if anything, I could do to prevent a car accident from where I was seated. I didn’t know how the BMW i8 worked, but it was possible I could hit the START button to kill the engine if it became clear Michael wasn’t driving safely. But that wouldn’t help much if we were barreling over a guardrail or into a brick wall.
I could kill the engine at the first sign that he wasn’t fit to be driving tonight. Then, I could grab the steering wheel and guide the car to safety. My other hand would grab the key fob and toss it out the window, away from the vehicle, so Michael wouldn’t be able to restart the car.
Fuck. This job was getting way too fucking complicated.
His driving was a bit choppy as he made his way out of the parking lot onto 3rd Street. But as soon as he was on the road, he smoothed out, and I allowed myself to relax a little. Big mistake.
“See, this is not so bad, right?” Becker said, taking a smooth left turn. “It’s not so bad to let your boss remember what it was like before he became a rich asshole and had everything done for him like a fucking invalid. Right?”
“Right,” I said, unable to decide if I felt more angry with him or sorry for him.
We were six blocks from Becker’s townhouse, and the traffic light had just turned green, when he pulled forward and BOOM! We were T-boned in the middle of the intersection, by a woman who was distracted by her phone.
* * *
I stared at the doorknob, willing myself to turn it so I could finally face the person I knew was standing on the other si
de of the door.
“Who is it?” Geneva shouted from the bedroom she shared with Alisha.
“It’s not for you!” I shouted back as I reached for the doorknob.
Taking a deep breath before I opened the door, I was not at all surprised to find a man in a freshly starched white shirt and slacks, a badge hanging from a chain that dangled around his thick neck.
“Detective Jones?” I said, opening the door wide to invite him inside.
“Mr. Meyers. May I come in?” he replied in a deep, authoritative voice.
“Please,” I said, stepping aside and motioning to the sofa my little brother slept on every night. “Have a seat.”
He pulled a notepad and pen out of his back pocket before he took a seat on the sofa.
“Would you like something to drink?” I offered. “All I have is water and OJ.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” he replied, writing something on his notepad. “I’d prefer to just get right to it, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I said, swallowing hard as I took a seat in the armchair to the right of the sofa. “Ask away.”
Jones cleared his throat. “You said in your report—”
“I actually don’t remember what I said in that rep—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “Let me finish, please. Then, you can speak.”
I nodded and pressed my lips together tightly to keep from calling the guy a prick.
“Okay, as I was saying. You said in your report that you didn’t know Mr. Becker had been drinking that night. If you’re his bodyguard, weren’t you supposed to be watching him all night long?”
I paused a moment to collect my thoughts. “Mike—I mean, Mr. Becker asked me to stay in the car. It was some kind of college or fraternity reunion. I can’t remember. Anyway, he said he didn’t want people to think he was an asshole—his words—for bringing a bodyguard.”
Jones pursed his lips as he stared at me for a moment, lost in thought. “So…you didn’t assume that Mr. Becker would be drinking at a fraternity reunion?”
I sighed as I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Look, I never personally saw him drink anything. And he was my employer. If he said he wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t going to call him a liar.”
“But your job was to protect Mr. Becker from all possible threats, even himself. Was it not?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want to lose my job.”
“So you risked losing your life by allowing a possibly intoxicated man to drive a car while you were in the passenger seat.”
“He threatened me. He said he would fire me or call the cops and say I was trying to steal his car.” I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as I tried to block out the images of Michael’s head, lopsided from the impact. “He said he just wanted to remember what his life was like before he became a rich asshole.”
I opened my eyes and Jones was looking at me through narrowed brown eyes, one eyebrow cocked skeptically as he sized me up. As he opened his mouth to speak, the phone attached to his belt buzzed loudly. He slipped it out of the clip, glanced at the screen, then answered the call.
“Jones.” His eyebrows scrunched together as he listened to the person on the other end. “I told Reyes to interview the mother. She’s the alibi witness… How am I supposed to fucking know where he is? Am I his fucking wife?... Well, someone has to do it before the 72-hour hold is up or that little fucker’s gonna run… No, I’m in the middle of an interview… The Becker accident…” He shook his head and let out an angry sigh. “Just get me the fucking address. I’ll do it.”
I looked Jones in the eye as he ended the call. “Look, Becker threatened to make up a story that I was trying to steal his car if I didn’t give him the keys. I had no choice.”
He shook his head. “I can see you’re upset. We’ll continue this conversation later. I’ll give you a call.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, eager to get this interview over with.
He stood from the sofa. “I have somewhere else I need to be. We’ll resume this interview later.”
He followed me to the door.
“Should I have a lawyer present?” I asked, placing my hand on the doorknob without turning it.
He raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Do you think you need one?”
I sighed as I opened the door. “I guess we’ll talk later.”
Closing the door behind Jones, I turned and leaned my back against the cool wood slab, still gripping the knob as I shook my head. This was like a game to him, but to me it was my life, and I wasn’t playing it right.
I had to get a lawyer before I spoke to Jones again. The last thing my family needed was another father figure in prison.
Maybe I should have told Jones about Sabrina, and her plan to defraud Kristin out of her inheritance. Then, I ran my hand roughly down my face in frustration. If I told Jones about that, I’d have to tell him about my involvement in Sabrina’s scheme. I was officially fucked.
Hush-Hush
I told Ollie and Zane to meet me at Tino’s Bar to get a drink and pick up some girls, because if I’d said we were just going to get a drink they would have suggested we get a case of PBR and drink at Ollie’s apartment instead. But I really didn’t feel like being around Ollie’s mom and sister, Betty, right now.
Betty had had a crush on me since elementary school, and his mom was constantly trying to force greasy food down my throat. I couldn’t maintain my alluring physique on a diet of macaroni and cheese and fried pickles. Alisha would throw her phone at my head if she heard me say that out loud.
The truth was, I just wanted to get out of the house to a friendly—and relatively noisy—bar, where I could have a chat with my two best friends without being overheard by any of our family members.
Ollie and I had been friends since I kicked his ass in first grade. Zane joined our little brotherhood in middle school, when he moved to the Bronx from Cleveland. We were all knuckleheads back then. Well, Zane was still kind of a knucklehead, but at least he had moved out of his mom’s house, even if it was to live with Yasmin, who hated Ollie and me with the fire of a thousand suns.
“Why the fuck are we at Tino’s?” Ollie complained. “There hasn’t been a decent girl in this shit-hole in at least thirty years.”
“Hey, watch your mouth, Dumbo,” Patty the barmaid barked at Ollie.
Zane and I laughed as Ollie subconsciously ran his finger along the back of his ear and said, “Come on, Patty. You know my mom couldn’t afford to get my ears pinned.”
Patty looked much too small and old to be working behind a bar in the Bronx. Her father had opened the place in the ’60s, when Patty was a teenager. Now in her early sixties, with her father having passed away almost a decade ago, Patty knew every single person who walked through the doors. And by knew, I meant she knew almost everything about them, from their family history to their relationship woes. Patty was everyone’s grandmother, mother, aunt, sister, friend, whatever you needed her to be.
Patty pursed her thin lips, then leaned forward and pinched Ollie’s cheek. “I know, sweetie. I’m just teasing you, you handsome little devil.”
Ollie blushed. “Aw, man, Patty. You’re embarrassing me.”
I shook my head and ordered a couple pitchers of beer, then carried them to a table in the corner of the dimly lit bar. Bobby Nunzio and his cousin, whose name I couldn’t remember, were playing darts about ten feet away, just out of earshot.
I barely participated in the conversation, nodding my head when Ollie asked if he could borrow some of my tools so he could work on his thirteen-year-old Altima, and shaking my head when Ollie asked if he could bring a girl to my house while my sisters were at school. Then, Zane started reminiscing about the time we snuck a bottle of Bacardi 151 into school, and got so blasted from a couple of sips that we spent the entire next period in the wrong classroom. This memory, and the way he laughed so hard as he recalled it, made me think of what Kristin had confessed to me.
; I didn’t think of myself as the type of guy who sought out women who needed to be saved. Kristin might argue otherwise. But the girls I’d dated before were nothing like Kristin. Unsurprisingly, they were more like my mom: loud, opinionated, and fiercely independent.
Kristin had the Miss Independent act down pat, but that wasn’t who she was. She was strong on the outside, with a fragile heart, which had not been handled with care up to this point.
I downed another beer as I realized that, very soon, I would be just another person in a long line of people who had queued up to break Kristin’s heart. When I was four and a half beers down, and my courage meter had leveled up, I decided it was time.
“I think I met a girl,” I said, staring at the sweat collecting on my fifth glass of PBR.
“You think you met a girl?” Zane replied in his unnaturally deep voice. “Is this the girl you have me stalking while you’re asleep?”
I ignored Ollie’s high-pitched laughter as I continued, “Dude, you have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into. I met a girl, and I like her.”
Zane cocked an eyebrow. “You like her? What are you in, fucking second grade? You like her?” He glared at me incredulously. “Why the fuck am I watching this girl’s apartment for you? Is she one of your rich clients? ’Cause that’s a shitty place to live if you’re rich enough for a bodyguard.”
I shook my head. “She’s not a client. Well…not really.”
Ollie tilted his head. “Seems like a pretty straightforward question to me: Is she or isn’t she a fucking client? Why are you being all spooky about it?”
I stared at the bubbles on the surface of the beer in my mug for a while, trying to figure out how to word my answer without giving away Kristin’s identity. “She’s…She’s someone I met recently.”
“Why the fuck do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?” Zane asked, clearly confused by my cryptic answer. “Is the pussy that good? Can I get in on that?”
I shook my head as Zane and Ollie bumped fists. “Nah, man, she’s not like Yasmin. She actually has standards.”