A Girl Named Digit

by Annabel Monaghan

  She turned to me and hugged me, then took my hands in hers and took a step back to take me in. “You could do with a blow dry, but you look absolutely gorgeous. You even look rested somehow, if that’s possible, and a little older.”

  Mr. Bennett answered for me, “She’ll be eighteen in June.” He gave me a wink. I’d never met someone who saw through me so completely.

  Awkward is not in my mother’s vocabulary. Before two beats passed, she led us down a few steps to the living room, where her 1920s-style low sofas flanked a large mirrored coffee table. She had set up a tray with an assortment of glasses, a bottle of red wine, and a tall elegant pitcher of lemonade. A small bowl of mixed nuts and a plate of shrimp cocktails completed the stage. And I mean stage—this is not how we live. But somehow Mom anticipated that these were shrimp-eating people we were dealing with. If only she knew.

  We all started to take our seats. I sat down next to my dad and subconsciously placed my hand down to my other side, like I was saving the seat for John. He did not meet my eye but rather crossed the room to sit on the far side of the adjacent sofa next to my mom. So this was how it was going to be. Probably smart.

  Because of the situation, the small talk lasted only a few minutes. Lovely home, how long have you lived in Santa Monica, where is John’s mother, et cetera. Out of nowhere we heard a crash from upstairs. John and Mr. Bennett were on their feet in a second, both reaching for their guns.

  My dad was a little amused. “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention our son, Danny. He has recently taken up karate and has done more damage to the furniture in his room than you can imagine.” He got up and shouted up the stairs, “Danny, Farrah’s here. Come down and say hi.”

  John and his dad took a second to compose themselves, gave a little embarrassed laugh, and sat back down. Mr. Bennett said something to John in a language I didn’t recognize, and they both laughed.

  John explained to the rest of us. “There’s an Iranian proverb: ‘He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string.’” Danny ran down the stairs, white karate sash tied around his forehead like Hong Kong Phooey. Absolutely ridiculous, but he couldn’t have cared less.

  “Digit!” He gave me a too-tight bear hug that really felt like he meant it. “Look at you, I thought you’d come back all vacant and kidnapped-looking. Are these the perps?”

  John got up. “Hi, Danny. I’m John Bennett. This is my father, Henry Bennett.”

  “Cool. Hey.” Danny shook their hands and plopped on the couch in the seat I’d hoped to save for John. I surveyed my previously innocent younger brother for signs that he’d been corrupted by my friend in my bikini. He looked more relaxed than ever, which was suspicious. “So what’s the big plan?”

  Mr. Bennett smiled at him and said, “Yes, let’s get down to business. Rebecca, please, tell us what Steven said when you last spoke.”

  Deep breath, shoulders back, she was on. “Well, he initially resisted meeting here, said that it would be too likely that he would be spotted. I asked why it would seem strange that an FBI agent would be coming to the home of a kidnapped girl’s parents. He had no argument.”

  “It’s likely that he wanted a location that he could secure—home turf as it were.” Mr. Bennett raised his glass of wine as he spoke, admiring the color, then sipping with approval. Nice job, Mom.

  “That’s what I thought. So I insisted that he come here, as my nerves are too raw to leave the house. He agreed to come here at nine a.m. tomorrow.”

  John tried to take control of the mission back from his dad. “Our plan is very simple. Steven will not be expecting me to be here, so I can use the element of surprise to disarm him. We will present him with the diaper bag and offer that he can either cooperate with us and give up Jonas Furnis, or we will turn the documents over to them ourselves. Assuming a normal survival instinct, he will cooperate, and we will arrange to move him into questioning and then witness protection.”

  My dad said, “That all makes sense. Where will Farrah be during this meeting? I don’t want any harm to come her way in case there is a scuffle.”

  “Her safety is my utmost concern as well . . .” John started.

  “You have no idea,” Mr. Bennett said under his breath.

  John ignored him. “We will have her secluded in an interior room, preferably upstairs.”

  “Well, then,” my mom began, “I’m sure you are all exhausted. Henry, let me show you to the guest room. And, Farrah, you can show John to your room.”

  Awkward silence. Awkward silence. My dad jumped in to answer the question. “Farrah, you can bunk in with Danny tonight.”

  “Of course.” I was relieved and disappointed. Everything about this was so weird. “Come on, John, it’s this way.” He followed me upstairs and into the small hallway that contained my room and my parents’. We stood outside my door for a second, my hand on the doorknob. He was smiling, and I was panicked. Was this the final step? Did anyone really need to know me that well? Couldn’t some of my idiosyncrasies be kept in the dark?

  John was laughing. He put his hand on mine and turned the knob. “This I’ve got to see.”

  He pushed the door open and there it was, in all its glory. Four walls and part of a ceiling covered in automobile poetry. It still struck me as beautiful as I took it in through John’s eyes. I appreciated the even way I’d affixed them all to the wall, the reasonably even distribution of colors around the room. But still, it was a little over the top.

  John walked around silently, running his fingers over every bumper sticker as he read them. After a few minutes, he turned to me and proclaimed, “You are one crazy chick.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. I kicked the door shut behind me and kissed him back like it might be the last time. My instincts were right again.

  It’s as Bad as You Think, and They are Out to Get You

  After as much possible time behind closed doors, I went out into the hall and said too loudly, “Okay, John, looks like you have everything you need in there. So I guess that’s it.” John grabbed my hand, trying to make me stay. “Don’t go through my stuff,” I whispered.

  “Me? Never.” He said it like he’d already decided which drawer he’d start with. He shut the door.

  I found myself still wide awake at two a.m., checking the clock over Danny’s trophy wall for any signs of morning. How could I be expected to sleep? First of all, John was all the way across the hall—too far away to smell and likely reading my trigonometry journal (don’t ask!). Plus there was tomorrow morning’s showdown with the terrorist sympathizer who was trying to have me killed. Remember that?

  I fell asleep around 3:30, so by the time I woke up, everyone besides Danny was already dressed and downstairs. I snuck across the hall to my room, hoping to find John but instead finding a neatly made bed. I took a shower in my very own bathroom and got dressed in front of my very own closet. I was stumped by so many clothing choices, so I went with a pair of jeans identical to the ones I’d been wearing all week and a brown version of the same T-shirt. Clean socks, boots on, ready to go. I found everyone sitting around the breakfast table, eating pancakes and bacon, sipping coffee, and getting acquainted. I got myself some orange juice and sat down next to John.

  “Nice way to mix it up,” he said, noticing my clean but nearly identical clothes.

  “Ha-ha.” I filled my plate with bacon and dug in.

  My dad was asking Mr. Bennett a thousand questions. “So if you live in New York and Connecticut, where do you file your tax return?” Uh, who cares?

  “We file in New York, as we are seldom in Connecticut and mostly out of the country.”

  “Do you go through a special line when you go through customs?” Was this really necessary?

  Mr. Bennett was all patience. “We do if we are reentering the country while not on assignment. But if we are on assignment, we have to go through the normal line so that we appear to be civilians.”

  “So you have fake passports?” Oh, good. Now my mom was g
rilling him too.

  “Yes, we have several sets of falsified documents that help us to move freely and undetected around the world. Now, Rebecca, tell me about your acting. Are you working now?” And with that, my mom took the stage. I watched her speak, without listening to what she was saying. I marveled at how comfortable she was in her skin, like a palm tree whose roots are so deep that it can sway and bend in impossible ways but always comes back to its center, tall and graceful. I wondered if this is what made her a good actress, this total knowledge and comfort with who she was. It was as if she could go as far as she wanted because she had this sense of herself to draw her back.

  John was watching me watching her. He caught my eye and gave me a little wink that made my heart race. I was sure I was blushing and was so grateful that my mom had my dad and Mr. Bennett so completely captivated.

  At 8:00 Danny rolled in and finished all the food on everyone’s plate. “So when does the bad guy get here?” He was as casual as ever, but the question seemed to put everyone a bit on edge. After John and I finished the breakfast dishes and the parents passed sections of three newspapers around, there was nothing to do but wait for our prey. Winking John was long gone; future FBI chief John was here to stay. He sat still in the living room, checking to make sure his gun was still in its holster exactly every 3.5 minutes. I was grateful to him for the regularity of this habit, feeling lulled by the rhythm. The anxiety in the room was such that any 3, 3.5, 3, 2, 3.5 pattern would have sent me over the edge.

  Mr. Bennett decided that the safest place for me to hide was our only windowless room, the downstairs bathroom. It put me closer than they’d like to where they would be confronting Steven, but it was the best defense in case he did not actually come alone and they tried to shoot through windows. At 8:55 Danny and I were placed in the bathroom, John and Mr. Bennett were concealed on either side of the TV armoire in the living room, and my parents were seated on the couch, as if waiting for dinner guests.

  At 9:10 there was a knock on the kitchen door. Showtime. I heard my mom cross the living room into the kitchen and open the door. “Hello, Steven. Thank you so much for coming, I have really been a wreck. Come in and sit down . . .” Whack, stumble, male scream, a minute passes.

  “Guys, you can come out now.” At Dad’s instruction, Danny and I went into the living room to see what was going on.

  Steven was seated in a kitchen chair, each hand cuffed behind him to a wooden spindle. He was completely disoriented and seemed to be scanning the room for the person who would make sense of this.

  “Care to explain this to me?” He was talking to John. “How did you get back to California, and why am I cuffed?” He did the shudder, shudder, but the punch just strained his bound hands.

  John was pacing in front of him. “We have the diaper bag; we know what’s in it. We know that you sent us to New York to die and that you even came to the shed in Central Park to kill us yourself. We know you have been stealing from Jonas Furnis and were blackmailed. And we know that you’ll be dead or worse as soon as we pass the diaper bag on to them. That’s what’s going on.”

  Steven went white. Literally, all the color drained from his face, and he looked very ill. He hung his head, maybe deciding what to say, for a few minutes. When he looked up, he addressed John. “I really did want to protect her, to keep her from enduring what I did in captivity. I wanted her in hiding for protection. I thought you’d have a little fun thinking you were fighting crime. I never read the transcripts. I didn’t even know Scarlet had been taped. Everyone knew that Jonas Furnis was running out of money, and she was getting cold feet thinking that she’d sacrificed her life for a cause that was going to go broke anyway. I was told to send her the ledger to show her how much had been spent on the bombing already and how much was still there. I had no idea she’d be able to figure out that I was stealing—she was just an angry young mother.”

  “Mother of who?” As much as I wanted to fade away into the wall I was leaning against, I needed to know.

  Steven looked my way. “She wasn’t much older than you, but she had a child. He was born with a severe birth defect believed to be caused by toxins in our environment. She left the baby with her mother to join up with Jonas Furnis. They knew they could use her anger for their mission.”

  John was calm. “The blackmail money was for the baby.” Steven nodded. “But why even involve us? When we told you we knew where the bag was, you could have just gone to get it yourself.”

  Steven smiled sadly. “You already knew too much about Scarlet. And I couldn’t run the risk that there was enough information in there to help you find Luke. What was I going to do if you got Luke arrested? He’d identify me the second he was in custody. Plus I knew that if Farrah had ten minutes with that ledger, she would see through it. I had to get you out from under FBI protection so you could . . . die. I alerted Jonas Furnis that you were on to Scarlet and Luke, but when they failed to kill you, I had no other alternative but to come kill you myself.”

  Mr. Bennett shook his head. “Steven, we started our careers together. How did you ever get so far off track that you’re helping terrorists?”

  “What would you do, Henry? I knew that if I ever defied them, they’d go after my parents, my children, everyone. And I figured I could work for both sides for a while. They’re really running out of money. And if I could take a little for myself, I’d speed up their collapse and make it worth my while, too . . . I don’t know. I thought it was a way out.”

  Mr. Bennett pulled a chair around and sat down so that he and Steven were knee to knee. “I feel sorry for you, Steven, I really do. God knows what you went through in captivity; God knows how broken you are inside. No one could expect your moral compass to be perfectly tuned after all that. I have always believed you were a good man. But now you have aided Jonas Furnis in a horrible bombing, and you have tried to kill my son and an innocent girl. It’s time to make things right.” Man, he was good.

  Steven hung his head again and started to cry. It was a silent cry, complete with real tears and small sobs. It seemed like it had been a long time coming. The master of patience and control, Mr. Bennett waited until he stopped and looked up. “Are you ready to help us?”

  “What do you want from me?” Steven asked.

  “First, I want you to call your contact at Jonas Furnis and tell them that Farrah is dead. Tell them that you found her in New York and you killed her yourself. Two shots to the head and the body in the East River. They are not to worry about her identifying them ever again.”

  I shuddered. My dad motioned for me to come sit between my mom and him on the couch. I was grateful. Danny sat across from us, wide-eyed and maybe understanding how much danger I was in for the first time.

  “Fine. You have my phone. Under contacts, hit Dry Cleaner.” John picked up his phone and started scrolling down the contact list. He pressed Dry Cleaner and the speaker, then held the phone in front of Steven.

  “Yeah?” was the answer.

  “It’s me. I’ve got her. Well, I mean I had her, took care of her, and dumped her in the river . . .”

  “Which river?”

  “East River. She’s gone. We can get back to work.” Steven looked around at us for approval. I kind of did feel sorry for the guy.

  “Good, because there’s a major hit today at two. Casualties in the hundreds, high profile. This is a breakthrough for us, so I’ll call you in thirty minutes with the details. It’s already set in motion, but we’ll need you on the back end for cleanup in case there’s evidence.”

  “Fine, we’ll talk then.” Steven nodded at John to hang up. He was whiter than before.

  I felt my body go cold. “There’s another attack tonight? Will we be able to stop this one? If we know about it in a half-hour, we’ll have time, right? Right?”

  Mr. Bennett was as smooth as silk. “Of course, Farrah, Steven will help us. He is also going to help us gather all the documentation that we need to find, arrest, and convict eve
ry member of the Jonas Furnis organization. Steven, I assume you have been keeping some sort of records, just in case.”

  “In case,” Steven repeated. “I’m tired. I’ve been hiding forever. John, I have heart medication in my front shirt pocket. Would you please give it to me, and then I will tell you what you need to know.”

  John looked at his dad, who nodded. He reached into Steven’s pocket and pulled out a prescription vial and handed it to his dad. Mr. Bennett read aloud, “Nitrostat. It’s nitroglycerin. Steven, are you having chest pains?” Steven nodded and stuck out his tongue, waiting for it. It was eerie, a grown man cuffed with his hands behind him, seated calmly with his tongue out, incapable of even punching one fingerless fist into the other. John placed the pill on his tongue and Steven swallowed it and smiled. “That’s better.”

  “John, if you go into my office, there is a set of seven filing cabinets behind my desk. The last one is labeled ‘Personal’ with a padlock on it. The code is 1-2-3-4.”

  “Your secret code is 1-2-3-4?” I was appalled.

  “I have wanted to get caught for a long time.” He coughed a few times before going on. “You’ll find a file called ‘Utility Bills.’ It’s everything you need to take Jonas Furnis down for good.”

  He dropped his head again, but this time he seemed to be concealing pain. “I’m sorry, John. I betrayed you, and you are a good agent.”

  “Thanks, Steven. I’m sorry about everything you’ve been through.” John put his hand on Steven’s shoulder. Could this get any heavier? Apparently so. John said, “Steven? Steven? Dad? I think he’s dead.”

  Mr. Bennett got up slowly, almost like he didn’t want to get where he was going. He lifted Steven’s head and gently touched his neck and nodded.

  Danny gasped. “Dude. He’s dead?”

  “That pill he took must have been some form of arsenic or succinylcholine or something. Marked to look like Nitrostat. I wonder how long he’s been carrying it around in his pocket, fighting the urge to take it.” Mr. Bennett started to uncuff him.