“You kept the original? You kept Myrtle Trimm’s will? What the hell for?”
“Why the hell not?” said Char. Like I was making a big deal out of nothing. Like there wasn’t a RealDoreen for whom that postcard really did mean quite a bit of money. “The point is, when I found this, I realized I could use it,” said Char, brandishing her photo of the squiggle. “I used it to try and measure your interest in Aetna Simmons. If you thought I already understood that she was just like you, a kid abandoned by her parents; maybe you’d let something slip about your relationship with her, how far you’d go on her behalf, that kind of thing. A slim chance but a chance. Opportunity in a piece of paper left lying around.”
I said, “You played me like a saxophone.”
I snarled her up in my arms. Char struggled. Beneath her scary self-control I felt the latent violence that broke into my flat and slugged me in the face. She won. She said, “Quit it, Kenji,” and got away. She rose and poured more coffee.
But when she turned back, she left the steaming mug on the dresser. She stood above me, looked at me. Like I was an ant she’d brushed off with a napkin.
“I’ve been wondering how Myrtle found out,” she mused. “How did she learn enough to blackmail Aetna?”
“You better get back here.”
“If Myrtle hadn’t had that stroke, she might’ve ruined everything. Why’d I listen to that idiot?” Char grumbled. “Because no old lady came up in the background check…”
“Who did Aetna’s background check?”
“Did it myself.”
“So who was she? Who was Aetna Simmons?”
“Nobody.”
The shrug of disdain, the muttering to herself, the admission about Myrtle’s will, all this implied the hunter had relaxed her guard somewhat. Or Char was toying with me. Again. Because she could. But I sensed she wasn’t lying at the moment. Granted, even at the time, I knew I would’ve been a fool to trust my senses; so I suppose I should call it a temptation. I was tempted to believe—simply because Char (impostor, thief, criminal mastermind) declined or neglected to say otherwise—maybe Nabi wasn’t Aetna, maybe Nabi was the one who’d lied.
It tortured me to think of it, spread out on the bed in Char’s hotel room, hankering with my whole body. I said, “I told you to get over here,” an empty voice receding into emptiness. “Come on, Char. There’s nothing else.”
“Wrong,” she said. “There’s work to do.”
Her phone monopolized my field of vision. The bright little screen, Aetna Simmons’ Final Words: Suicide and Suicide Notes as Works of Art.
“This is good work,” said Char. “You read through her. You saw through her to me.”
“You want me to beg you, woman?”
“I want you to work for me. I want you to take her place.”
Lying down and glad of it. Clocktower’s phase-shifting face seemed to loom over me in the creepiest hallucination I’d ever had. Creepy because in another time, before I’d ruined myself, Char’s suggestion would’ve sounded like good sense. At face value, her next question was even reasonable.
“She couldn’t hack it. So what. Why should I give up? You’ve done most of the research. You understand the gig. You know how to hide in plain sight. Whatever you need in the way of information, leave it to me. You’ll get background on each case in plenty of time for you to do your part. Delivery systems are already in place just like you thought.”
So I wasn’t all wrong, Nabi.
I said, “You’re serious.”
“Always.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I want to know.”
“I’ll be CRO before I’m forty.”
She’d save so much money that the company would beg her to steal Jim Falk’s position. Maybe that’s his only role in this: a target. But the way Char said it, CRO. Sneered it, sort of. Or she didn’t, she was as serious as a grave, and on account of my maudlin vulnerability I wanted to pretend her goals were loftier than that.
“A promotion,” I said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all? Better open your eyes, mister. There’s a very nasty world outside your little island. And you know what? It’s the real world. We don’t play nice in America—”
“Last I checked, we don’t here either.”
“Well, you still don’t have a clue. Men never have a clue. You have no idea how damn impossible it is, a black woman trying to eke her way up the corporate ladder.”
She spat out the word woman. Like she spat out the word men.
“They tell you it’s about the numbers, whatever kind of numbers you generate on the company’s behalf. Then they tell you it’s about the length of your skirt. Well, let me tell you something. My numbers can’t just be good, they’ve got to be ten times as good as any white man’s. My skirt better be ten times as accommodating as any white girl’s. I can’t just be better, Kenji, I’ve got to be undeniably better. And I can’t just be a sycophant, I’m expected to grovel. And grin when I’m passed over for a giggling white bimbo who wouldn’t recognize a good idea even if it didn’t bounce right off her hairspray. Well, listen, I’m done with that. I’m not whoring myself to rich bastards anymore. I’m not letting any female whore her way past me. I’m done celebrating baby showers for people who think they should work less and get paid more just because they’ve generated yet more people. I’ll get there my own way: by doing my damn job.”
“And the rest of us can bow to the dragon or get eaten.”
“Right. That’s how the real world works.”
When I think about her now, I recall this ravenous resentment as the first thing Char showed me. Right at the beginning when I took her by surprise, showing up at her crime scene with my crazy-rich-Asian eyes and designer jacket. Her voice at the Rosedon was as cool as it was then at Myrtle’s door. Slippery and deep. Out of tune with the ferocity in her words. It meant there was more to her than ferocity.
I’d be damned if I could tell you what it was. Bitterness I get. Racism I get. Fucked and re-fucked. I get that. And the other thing that wasn’t smashed-against-the-armoire pain. What I don’t get is how Char got to be so cool about it. She was as dispassionate as she was furious; she took revenge by paying it forward with an indifference worthy of Manifest Destiny.
Maybe it was an act. Maybe she was on something I’ve never heard of. Maybe she’d never overdosed on literature. Whatever it was, I envy it. Lying on Char’s bed in anguish, I envied her goddamn stolidity so fucking much I had to deal with fighting tears. And Char mistook my struggle for an attack of conscience.
“Look,” she sighed. “We’re dealing with people who either set themselves up to wait for somebody to die or didn’t even know there was anything to gain from it. What if the insured lived to be a hundred? What if the beneficiaries died before he did? They wouldn’t see a penny. Happens all the time. Point is nobody’s supposed to count on death benefits. That’s why suicide clauses exist.”
I was pretty far gone but not enough to think Char actually trusted me. Still, we seemed to operate on some ambivalent level that we were both prepared to pretend to mistake for trust for the time being. With Char, I think that’s the best anyone can hope for. And because the unconfirmed possibility remained that Char’s blindness and my own had helped Nabi escape attention, I thought I’d better make the most even of this fictive trust. If the idea was to end Char’s pursuit of Aetna Simmons, what better, surer way to make it happen?
I said, my voice croaky and enervated, “That stuff about Bull’s Head Shreds. The rumors, the investigation, all that’s gone if I say yes. As far as you’re concerned, Nabilah Furbert’s out of the picture. Deal?”
That luscious fiend. She shrugged and flashed her crooked smile.
“Char, I told you everything.”
“I know.”
“So what else?”
“She’ll be fine.”
“You know something else.”
“I said she’ll be fine.”
What choice did I have? I closed my eyes and said, “I’m not a forger.”
“We’ll stick to people with computers. Just get the words right. The voices. Like she did.”
Steal their voices and change history. My hands went to my head.
Joining them, another touch. Char grinned at me like a shark, and all I’d gotten out of her added up to nothing. I said, “Wipe that fucking look off your face.”
As we clawed at each other, I made myself pretend nothing mattered anyway. It was despicable, I tore her tunic to pieces. She raised my face to hers and looked at me.
“You should go,” she said.
“Shut up.”
“You’re already done.” Sniggering, knowing I would beg. “I’ll be in touch. Go home and sleep. And lie low for a little.”
“I don’t sleep anymore, Char. I write questions without answers and get high.”
“Then get high. Don’t pretend you need me to warn you about that shit. Look, if it ends up that you can’t do the job, I’ll get someone else.”
Just like that, no big deal. One way or another, I’d lost everything to her and it was my own fault. With an injured cry, I forced my way into her bikini. And though we grunted like boxers, in the end I was a broken pile of stones waiting for the sea. I tried to make Char hold me but she peeled me off and panted, “There. All right? Enough. Go home now, Kenji, please.”
The next twenty-four hours I passed like a zombie, inundating my hard drive with this mess as though, wherever you’ve gone, you could magically see into my computer. As though you’d care to see into it. Maybe there’s nothing intelligible here. Maybe you planned this—to do or make however much and then go, fly away, maybe never touch down ever again except perhaps on the surface of the sea, where the tides will make sure you keep moving. But it seems to me that’s impossible. Or I never understood anything. I’m just casting pleas into the void.
I emailed Nabi. Texted Nabi. I called Nabi and begged her for a word. Two words, I’m okay, that’s all. She didn’t respond, and I don’t blame her. She’s better off without me even though life without her is a room full of smoke. When Martin called, I thought I was hallucinating.
“You heard from Nabi?”
“No. Who do they think you’re hiding?”
“Fackin Santa Claus. The crew of the Mary Celeste, Martin, jeesums.” And I had to explain about Aetna and the Ten. “Look, Nabi said—”
“And where do they put the profits from this racket?”
“Fuck you, bye. Where do you think?”
“It’s CAM, isn’t it. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it.”
“No. Call the cops, asshole. It’s been almost a week.”
“I’m trying to help, stupid.”
“Oh, you’re trying help. Finally you give a shit. Look, I’ve tried everything, I’ve called everybody, nobody knows where she is. You are her husband, Martin, call the fucking cops!”
“You do not want the police involved at this stage. You don’t want the publicity.”
He meant he didn’t want it, fucking cad.
“What if she’s in trouble?”
“What kind of trouble could she possibly—”
“If she was Aetna Simmons, and the whole damn world was out to—”
“She thinks she’s Steve Jobs sometimes too, did you know that?” And he laughed in my face.
“You don’t deserve her.” I was fairly screaming, but my voice cracked and split like a pumpkin on Halloween.
“You know, I’ve never seen you drunk before, Kenji. Should be quite a sight. How soon can you get over here?”
Chez Furbert, like I’m at his beck and call. Something he has to show me, he says, right away and “time is limited.”
It will take everything I have to describe it sensibly. By the time Martin called, I hadn’t slept in five days. I couldn’t think without Zo, and Zo was starting to scare me: no matter how much I took, I remained wretched, and it filled my mind with water.
Your condo. The capital city reclines across the water, visible in its entirety from your dining-room balcony. That massive dining room with its ostentatious chandelier; huge den with billiard table and a bar that runs the length of the room. You and Martin don’t play billiards. One day I asked you why you needed all that stuff, you remember what you said? You said Martin has an image to maintain. I’ve always despised that condo. You never asked me to come to you there alone. It had to be my place unless you were having a crowd. Only then was it safe to have me.
Above the fireplace are framed photographs of the Furberts. You’re smiling. Your smiles are uninhibited. I’m experienced with these photos; I knew I had to take precautions. I arrived with my nerves cushioned by cottony sleepiness, so relaxed I could barely raise my hand to the knocker. But when I walked in, the place was like an alien planet. The sunny yellow on the walls—I remember when you showed me the swatches, I helped you to choose, but it was like the sulfuric atmosphere of Venus. The Birdsey I gave you was suddenly a window onto someplace unfamiliar, a place where trees have claws and the ocean is slick as a dead eye, for I no longer know who you are. I ran to the powder room off your colossal kitchen, and between waves of sickness I asked myself why I’d come.
I was there because in my cloudy reception of Martin’s phone call, I’d come to the following surmise: Martin wanted to talk about CAM because it’s easier to get dirt on local companies than overseas outfits and because blackmailing CAM could inspire Masami to blackmail Falk, who would thenceforth cough up Nabi’s whereabouts. This didn’t make sense, but it was all I could do. In truth I was there to see the photos. I was there because I knew what the furniture would do to me. Because the color of the carpet, a pale silver, almost white, was excruciating. Martin made me sit in a leather chair he’d bought for her. He made me drink coffee, which I really couldn’t stomach, since the idgit assumed I was hungover.
Meanwhile he paraded himself like a professor. His lecture was orderly. He used his hands no more than necessary, and he didn’t even curse. As for me, well, you really can’t expect that in my condition I’ll remember what he said, not exactly. But certain words and the gist of his oration are still with me. Technically, I believe, it only happened this morning.
By way of introduction, Martin announced that he had something on which he required my “opinions.” Initially he wasn’t going to share this “discovery” of his, not with me. He knew I’d find out “in due course,” and he hoped my enlightenment, whenever it occurred, would be “as nasty a surprise as that photo was for [him].” However, having done a lot of praying, he’d come to realize that letting the “discovery” hit me like a tidal wave was “not a Christian thing to do.” In his magnanimity he’d concluded I’d be better off if I learned this thing from him rather than someone less benevolent. He, for one, would have preferred to learn of his wife’s infidelity from her or even me rather than be “stricken by it from out of the blue.” Then he looked at his watch and asked me to forgive him for keeping close track of the time, the reason for which I would soon learn. Dramatic pause.
“In short, you may be right about Clocktower Insurance. I emphasize the word may.”
Pausing for my response. None. This was old news.
“I’ve found some evidence,” said Martin. “That’s what I want to show you.” And to be fair, he gave credit where credit was due. It was really a member of his team who’d found the “evidence.” Some kid named Nikea.
But before we get to that, he wanted me to know three things. First: except Nikea and Gavin, no one on his team knew he was interested in Clocktower or CAM. For Nabi’s sake he wanted to keep it under wraps; he enjoined me to do the same. Second:
when Martin considered the evidence, it led him kicking and screaming to the postulation that somebody at CAM may indeed have been involved in “something sketchy with someone from Clocktower. And with Aetna Simmons. Not necessarily faking people’s suicides; we didn’t find anything like that.”
However (the third thing): “Masami Okada-Caines wouldn’t take on a big account like Clocktower’s without a due-diligence inquiry. If Clocktower was doing something underhanded, why didn’t it show up in that preliminary investigation?”
This question wasn’t a question but a rhetorical flourish tacked onto the fanfares Martin tooted on his own horn. So there was little point in stating the obvious: lo and behold, certain criminals were savvy enough to outmaneuver the team leaders of the world. Char, for example, could be dastardly enough to achieve whatever it takes to make herself untouchable. But thinking about this in Nabi’s armchair gave my stomach palpitations. I know stomachs aren’t supposed to have palpitations. Since I missed my opportunity to state the obvious, Martin ran with the assumption of his species’ infallibility. Because everything in our fucked-up multiverse is absolutely contingent and thus could be anything at any time, he ran smack into the truth.
“Now, I’m sorry to say this, Kenji, but if you’re right, somebody at CAM must’ve falsified the investigation’s findings.”
As much as I enjoy drama, I no longer had the energy to beat around the bush. “It’s not just somebody. It’s Masami.”
Martin had a finger in the air in preparation for his ensuing point. He’d already drawn breath.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He lowered the finger.
“Nobody else could make that kind of decision.”
“Her reputation is spotless. You and I both know, heck, everybody knows her business ethics are above reproach.”
Drafts of a Suicide Note Page 34