by Neil Plakcy
“I don’t know why my dad kept that,” Ethan said. “He couldn’t fit into it anymore.”
“Maybe he kept it for you,” I said.
“He was a loser,” Ethan said. “He told my mom that he was running out of money, even with his new job, and she was going to have to go to work. He couldn’t even take care of us.”
“He wasn’t a loser at all,” I said. “Just a grownup. We make mistakes sometimes, just like everybody else. Did he ever tell you about the night he and I and a bunch of our buddies got arrested?”
Ethan sniffled and looked up at me. “He got arrested? He was such a goody-goody.”
I told him the story of our naked romp around the exercise course, embellishing with details. I gave Doug all the best lines, and by the time I was finished Ethan was laughing.
“That doesn’t mean that what we did was right,” I said. “The police called our parents and we got into a lot of trouble. Instead of working to earn money that summer I had to volunteer to clean up along the river.”
“You think that’s what they’ll make me do? Clean up?”
I shrugged. “I’m not the judge, and I don’t know what you did. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” The laptop was on by then, and Ethan began to fiddle with it.
“That wasn’t the only time I got in trouble,” I said, after a while. “I guess I didn’t learn my lesson so quickly. Maybe you’ll be smarter than I was.” I leaned back against the bedroom wall, resting against a poster of a soccer player. “Or maybe you’ll end up in prison, like I did.”
He turned around quickly. “You were in prison? For what?”
“Mostly for being an arrogant prick who thought I was smarter than everyone else.” I skipped over the motivation for my crime and focused on the time I spent in prison. “I was scared every day. There were guys there who had killed people. Crazy guys who should have been a mental hospital instead of a lockup.”
Ethan’s mouth was open but he wasn’t saying anything.
“I was lucky, though, because I had a college education and I can speak well and write well. I got assigned to work in the library, and I helped a couple of really bad guys work on their parole applications.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. I hated talking about this part, but it was important that Ethan hear it. “Another guy wasn’t so lucky. He was a lot like me, white, college graduate, in for only a couple of years for some kind of fraud scheme. He thought the best way to succeed in prison was to mouth off to everybody, to brag about how much better he was than they were.”
“That doesn’t sound too smart,” Ethan said.
“It wasn’t. One day we were out in the exercise yard and somebody stuck a shank in him. You know what a shank is?”
He shook his head.
“In his case, it was a toothbrush with a razor blade in the end. Somebody stuck it in the back of his neck as he was walking past. He stumbled and the guards kicked him and told him to get up. It wasn’t until they saw the blood that they realized.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died. They never found out who killed him.” I looked down at my lap. “I knew, because I saw it happen. But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to be next.”
“Wow.”
“So you see, Ethan, you’re at a crossroads now. Things have been tough for you—your parents getting a divorce, then your dad dying. You can go two ways from here.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You can step up and be the man of the family,” I said. “Be nice to your mother and your sister. Both of them are in as much pain as you are. It’s tough, but you have to believe in yourself, that you’re strong enough to get through this, and anything else that life throws at you.” I took a breath. “Or you can give in to the pain. Do things you know are wrong just because they help you forget for a while, or because they give you a little jolt of pleasure.”
I stood up. “Take a look through the rest of the box when you get a chance. And if you ever want somebody to talk to, call me. Or Rick. We both care about you, and your mom and Madison, and we’re here to help you when things get tough.”
Ethan mumbled something, and I walked out.
32 – Temptations
I was drained after my conversation with Ethan, but even after Lili went to bed, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was obsessed with the connection between Doug Guilfoyle, Alex Vargas and Eduardo de la Fe.
Did de la Fe have an account with Beauceron, too? I’d already established that he and Doug knew each other, through the bar and LinkedIn. It wasn’t a big leap to de la Fe investing some money with Beauceron.
I had already gotten Shawn Brumberger to reveal that Alex had an account and I didn’t think I could fool him twice. I didn’t know how to find that out other than to hack into Beauceron’s server.
I pulled out Caroline’s laptop and fired it up. My fingers tingled at the thought of snooping around where I didn’t belong. The neurons in my brain started firing as I remembered how easily I’d hacked into it before, how great it had felt when I had taken control of that elderly professor’s computer, how I’d used my wits and tools to defeat the meager security measures in place at Beauceron.
I had admitted to Ethan that before I was arrested, I’d been an arrogant prick who thought he knew more than anybody else. Was I still that guy, or had I learned from my mistakes?
How could I pretend to advise a teenager if I had so little impulse control myself? I took a deep breath. I’d hacked into the Beauceron server so that I could download the hyperlinked spreadsheet. There was no other way to get hold of it, and it was the cornerstone of the investigation I’d begun for Doug.
But now I was just on a fishing expedition, struggling to find some connection between Doug and Eduardo de la Fe. Even the Feds weren’t allowed to do that, so there was no way I could assert that I was better than they were, above the law. I remembered what Rick had said, that I thought I could twist the law around to my own advantage.
I closed the laptop, probably with more force than I had intended. I had promised Rick and Lili that I would try to control my impulses, that I would control my arrogance and my curiosity. It was time to remove the temptation from my grasp.
From the garage, I fetched a short ladder, then carried it up to the second-floor hallway. With the computer in one hand, I climbed a couple of rungs, and pushed aside the access panel to the attic.
Right after Caroline died, I’d made a place up there to hide it so that my parole officer couldn’t find it, between the plastic tub of wrapping paper and the box of half-chewed dog toys I couldn’t bear to throw away. I slid the laptop back into place, and before I could change my mind, I replaced the access panel, climbed down, and put the ladder back in the garage.
My fingers were still tingling and my brain racing, so I opened my own laptop and logged into the hacker support group I had joined a few months before, at Rick and Lili’s suggestion. I scanned through the recent messages, then searched the group archives. When I couldn’t find what I wanted to know, I asked the question: “Have any of you been arrested? Spent time in prison for hacking? I have.”
I wrote about my conversation with a friend’s son and how I wanted to show him, through my own experience, that if he didn’t change his behavior he was on the road to more and more trouble. But how could I say that, when I myself hadn’t learned?
I posted the message and thought about Eduardo de la Fe. I was a smart guy—or so I kept telling myself. I had to be able to find out what I wanted to know without hacking.
Could I find something shady in his past, the way I’d discovered Shawn Brumberger had worked for that boiler room operation early in his career? Had de la Fe mentioned something on social media that might indicate he had given some money to Doug to invest?
I started to research Eduardo de la Fe. He had quite a digital footprint on social media. Since his divorce, he had begun hanging out at bars and ball games and
car races, often accompanied by pretty women. His “likes” included Macallan Scotch whiskey, H. Uppmann Cuban cigars, and a shirt manufacturer called “The King of the Guayabera.”
He had expensive tastes. Did that mean he had little left over to invest? I kept looking and it was frustrating that I couldn’t find any connection to Doug Guilfoyle or Beauceron.
I went back to Facebook. Tiffany had been active, posting photos of her apartment after the break in and then again after she and I had cleaned up – though I noticed the made it sound like she did all the work herself.
A few hours earlier, she had posted that she had managed to get hold of her boss so she could get into the clinic the next day to pick up the personal stuff she had left behind in the flurry of the FBI raid. “I am not abandoning my only pair of Manolos,” she wrote.
Shit. If I was right, and Eduardo de la Fe knew she had incriminating evidence against him, then she could not be alone anywhere with him. I had to warn her, but I didn’t have her cell phone number.
It was too late to call Rick, so I sent him a message with what I’d learned, and told him to warn Tiffany.
I didn’t sleep well that night, my head full of strange dreams about Tiffany swimming in the Delaware Canal and then bumping into Doug’s dead body floating there. She started flailing around as if she was drowning and from the bank, Pixie the Yorkie began barking madly. Ethan sat oblivious, caught up in something on his father’s laptop. I dove into the water to save Tiffany but realized I had forgotten how to swim.
When I woke, Lili was staring at me. “You kicked me,” she said. “You were flailing around like you were having some kind of fit.”
“I was swimming,” I said. “Or at least trying not to drown.” I told her about my dream and then remembered Tiffany’s plan to meet up with Eduardo de la Fe that afternoon. “I have to call Rick,” I said.
“I’m going back to sleep,” Lili said as I got up. “I don’t have to be at graduation until noon.”
Since I was only an administrator, my presence wasn’t required, and I planned to spend a quiet day at Friar Lake. But first I had to call Rick.
I took the phone out into the courtyard despite the morning chill, so I wouldn’t disturb her sleep.
Rick told me he had already called Tiffany and left her a message, telling her that he’d come up that evening and go to the clinic with her. “I said I’d pick her up at five, and she’s meeting de la Fe at five-thirty. I didn’t want to freak her out so I didn’t tell her what you found on that drive.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“Probably a good idea.” He sighed. “I have to interview a witness in Lumberville this afternoon, so I’ll meet you at your office at four and we can drive up to Union City together.”
Rochester and I ate breakfast and then walked around River Bend. By the time I finished my shower and got dressed, Lili was still asleep. Her black cap and gown, with the brown-lined hood that signified her degree was in fine arts, were hanging on the back of the bedroom door. I kissed her forehead and left her asleep.
As I drove up to Friar Lake, I thought that perhaps next year I’d volunteer as a marshal, organizing students. Or perhaps I’d be teaching again part-time, and I’d be able to march in the academic procession with Lili. I didn’t have a cap and gown, but I did still have the hood I’d bought when I graduated from Columbia with my MA in English.
The campus would be buzzing with crowds of happy families, the graduates in their sky-blue gowns and broad smiles. I remembered my own graduation, years before, my parents so proud of me, the enthusiasm I’d felt and all my hopes for the future.
I was restless at Friar Lake, walking Rochester around and around the property until he finally refused to go any further. Early in the afternoon I went back to my hacker support group. Brewski_Bubba, the guy I’d chatted with the other day, had answered my post.
He hadn’t revealed much about himself, just that he had gotten into trouble with credit cards, and his posts were often about the minor irritations of life lived on a cash basis—his inability to make plane reservations online or to rent a car, the way he always had to carry cash for everything from buying gas to groceries. All the little things that we take for granted in our plastic-obsessed society.
“County lockup, three times,” he wrote. “No big deal. I’m six-four and weigh close to 300, though a lot of that is in my beer belly, LOL. So nobody messed with me. But then the state got hold of me and shoved me in St. Clair—worst prison in Alabama.”
He typed in a link to an online article about the prison, but I skipped that and kept reading his post. “Seriously bad dudes there,” he wrote. “Locks didn’t work right and the warden didn’t give a shit. Dudes were getting shanked all the time while they were sleeping. Swear to God, I had to sleep with one ear open in case anybody broke in.”
That made my time in California seem like a picnic. Sure, I’d been scared, but at least I’d felt secure in my cell.
“That’s why I won’t get myself a credit card again, even though I can,” he continued. “Any time I think about it I remember what it was like to be in the middle of pure evil. If you have any temptation, hold off.”
I thanked him for his honesty and told him that I’d remember what he wrote. Then I switched over to my own Facebook account. Lili had posted a selfie with a couple of her colleagues, all in their academic regalia. I “liked” it, and added a message about them being the best-looking group of faculty at the graduation.
Just before four, Rick arrived and we headed north. “You get your interview done?” I asked.
“That was the high point,” he said. “This morning I spent a couple of hours at the Court of Common Pleas in Doylestown with Catherine and Tamsen, waiting for the hearing for Ethan and the other two boys. Ethan pled no contest to three misdemeanors and the judge sentenced him to a hundred hours of community service.”
“He’s getting off easy this time. I hope it’s enough to keep him honest in the future. What about the other two?”
“Their parents hired Hunter Thirkell and he advised them to plead not guilty. A big mistake, in my opinion. Good thing you had that talk with Ethan. It seems to have put some sense into his head.”
We talked off and on through the drive, Rochester occasionally poking his head between the seats. I had just turned onto 495 when Rick’s phone rang. “Hey, Tiff,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
I could hear her screaming through the phone. “Ricky! Oh my God, I was so stupid!”
He put the phone on speaker so I could hear, too.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Eddy called me this afternoon and I told him you were going to come with me to pick up my stuff. But he said he had a thing to go to and we had to meet earlier.”
Rick looked at me and without him saying anything, I accelerated and began darting around cars. From the back seat, Rochester stirred nervously.
“What happened? You didn’t go to the clinic with him, did you? After I told you to wait for me?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal. So I said yeah and I came over here.”
“Hold on. You’re at the clinic now?”
She had begun to cry and it was tough to make out her words sometimes.
“He started yelling at me and telling me I stole something that belonged to him. The only thing I could think of was that dumb llama thingy—it was the only thing I took from the office that didn’t belong to me.”
Of course that’s what he’d want. It had all that information about clinic billing and his bank accounts.
“I handed it back to him but when he put it in his computer all he saw was the pictures your friend loaded for me. I told him that we had dumped all the stuff that was there but he didn’t believe me.”
She sobbed again. “He hit me so hard I fell down, and I must have hit my head.”
I got off the highway and after looking both ways ran a red light. Rick didn’t say anything, just nodded
. “It’s okay, Tiff. I’m on my way. Is he still there?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t move. He knocked a desk over me and I can’t get out from under it.”
He reached out and grabbed the dashboard but he didn’t say anything to me as I swerved around cars. We were only a few blocks from the clinic by then. “I’m almost there. Just hold on.”
I heard her sniffling through the phone, and then she stopped suddenly. “Oh my God, Ricky, I think the building is on fire! I can smell smoke.”
I handed him my phone. “I’m calling 911 right now,” he said. “Give me the address.”
As I navigated through the crowded streets he relayed the information that Tiffany had given him to the dispatcher. At least there were no visible flames coming out of the building. Maybe the fire was a small one.
I pulled up in front of the clinic and Rick jumped out, holding both phones. The last thing I heard him say was, “I’m here, babe. I’m on my way in.”
I watched as he ran ahead. “Don’t do anything stupid,” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me by then. Rochester stuck his head between the seats and whimpered.
“It’s okay boy.” I peered ahead and saw Rick race up to the front door of the clinic and tug on the handle. When it wouldn’t give he looked around frantically.
I was still double-parked, and a car pulled up behind me, beeping. I opened my window and waved the car past as I saw Rick grab a chair from the café next door, then slam it toward the plate glass window into the clinic.
The glass shattered as the car behind me went past. Then Rick disappeared through the opening.
There was no on-street parking I could see ahead of me, so I made a K-turn my driver ed teacher would have been proud of and went back down the street until I spotted a space in front of the Phone Llama store.
I parked, put Rochester on his leash and hurried back toward the clinic as I heard the approach of a siren.