Untangling the Black Web

by T. F. Jacobs

  She waits a long moment.

  “I work in American True Care’s IT security. I’ve seen the contracts you review. I’ve seen all kinds of people denied for claims for BS reasons. But the problem is that these rules allowing this stuff to happen don’t come from you or me; they’re from the blokes at the top.”

  “So if you are in IT security, does that mean you have access to the e-mails and computers of the executives?” My brain starts to churn again, turning over the possibilities of what she’s saying.

  “I do, but these wankers are careful. They don’t leave paper trails when it comes to the fuckin’ deals they make. Nothin’ incriminating is ever documented. It’s all word of mouth and deals between politicians and lobbyists.”

  “Look, I’m getting impatient. You bring me here against my will, my wife’s fucking funeral was just a few hours ago, and frankly it doesn’t sound like you have much to offer. If you don’t have access to any e-mails that matter, are you telling me you can get an executive to come forward?”

  “I wish. Those bastards are bound to so many NDAs and secrecy agreements, you can’t even get close. Plus, they are the ones making the money, so why do they care if they break laws?”

  “Then what the fuck do you have?”

  They exchange another look.

  “I can help you become a lobbyist.”

  I laugh. Then I laugh some more. As if lobbyist positions just fall from the sky.

  “We’re serious, David.”

  “I’m done here. This is absurd.”

  “What if we told you we could get you into a lobbyist position at American True Care tomorrow?”

  “I’d say you are insane.”

  “David, we’ll do whatever we need in order to accomplish our goal. We’ve lost loved ones too. We’ve been screwed. We’ve seen it. We want the same thing you do. We want to help you, and we are dead serious about what we can offer.”

  “And who is this guy?” I motion at the man. “Silent as a mouse.”

  The masked woman looks at him.

  “A journalist,” he replies. “I can help get your case out there. But it’s only going to work if you have something more concrete to run with.”

  “And let’s say I miraculously become a lobbyist. Then what?”

  “Then you get proof of the corruption at the top of the food chain and use it to build a better case,” she replies.

  She lifts a manila folder.

  “You want our help? Then give this to your boss, Stan. Demand that he give you the position that just opened up last week, government contracts recruiter. Don’t look in the folder beforehand. Don’t tell him how you got it. Tell him there are copies, and that if he ever breathes a word about how you got the job, you will release them.”

  They want me to blackmail Stan?

  “What’s inside it?”

  “It’s not important. Like I said, we are very serious about what we do.”

  My head is spinning. This is all ludicrous.

  They watch me through the slits of their masks. Studying me.

  “You will come off as an insane, drunk loon trying to avenge his wife if you go public with what you have. This is an opportunity to fight with the big boys,” the woman says.

  I think about what she said. She’s right. I already know I can’t do this alone, but fuck.

  “Why the masks? Why abduct me with guns? I want to know who I am working with.”

  “We take precautions. You should see this as a incentive for working with us. We will reveal ourselves once you prove to us that you’re in. Once you give Stan the folder. Until then, it’s not worth the risk. You won’t win in court, and we won’t help unless we feel you can win.”

  “What’s inside it?” I ask again.

  They exchange glances.

  “It’s best you let Stan open it. Let’s just say we don’t want you getting second thoughts.” Her voice hangs in the air.

  What she is telling me is that whatever is inside is bad. Real bad.

  I get up from my seat and snatch the envelope from her hand.

  “Good,” she says. “We will call you tomorrow night to confirm.”

  I narrow my eyes. I want to show them I am in control. I stay silent.

  “Also, gotta keep that video from the Internet. Let me know if you see it again and I’ll help get it down. If American True Care sees it and finds out what you are up to, you’re done. I guarantee it.”

  I nod again. “Trust me, I know.”

  They both stand. The woman lifts a bag, and I can see it’s the same one they put over my head before.

  “Give it to me,” I demand. If I’m going to have a bag over my head, then it will be because I chose to allow it, not because they forced it on me.

  . . .

  The bag is ripped off my head. My eyes adjust to the night. The van pulls forward and out of sight. I’m back in the alleyway behind my apartment.

  I glance down at the envelope in my hands. I’m tempted to open it.

  This afternoon I watched my wife get sent into the ground. I took a verbal stance against the entire industry that killed her and expected to start protesting until justice was served—knowing that would likely never happen. Now I have other plans. Crazy plans. I’m supposed to blackmail my asshole of a boss into getting me a lobbyist position with the company that I loathe. The company I want to bring down. And I’m teaming up with masked vigilantes who threatened my life and kidnapped me to get what they wanted.

  Am I crazy?

  Maybe. But they’re right. I need a better case—more evidence. I want justice, and whoever they are, they’ve done their homework. What else do I have to lose? I’m going to fight with everything I’ve got till I get the justice Lexi deserves.

  Chapter 5

  My palms are sweating. The back of my white button-down shirt is soaked. My breathing is uneven.

  I’m standing outside Stan’s office holding the manila envelope. His far-too-young assistant, Jackie, is watching me from behind her desk.

  I probably look insane. Everyone in the office knows my wife’s funeral was yesterday. No one expected to see me here. I didn’t sleep last night, not even for a minute. I thought about Lexi. About lying together. About our wedding. About justice. This plan is ludicrous, but I need to see it through. I can’t explain it, but it’s the only thing keeping me going.

  I raise my hand to the door, then knock twice.

  “Yeah, what?” Stan calls angrily from behind it.

  I twist the handle.

  His eyes widen, and then he glares at me. Anger flushes over his face.

  “Some nerve yesterday. I don’t care if your wife died, you have no goddamn right to speak to me like that,” he says, his New York accent shining through. His balding hair looks stupid.

  I want to dance across the room and grab him by his tie. I want to pin him against the wall.

  But I restrain myself.

  I walk toward the desk and sit.

  “You are lucky I don’t fire your ass after a stunt like that,” he says. He thinks threatening me is the way to get me on my knees begging to him. That’s what he always does.

  Despite all the times I thought about opening the envelope, I didn’t, but at this moment I hope it’s even worse than I am expecting. It better be something good enough to put him in his grave.

  I slam it onto the desk. He jumps back, knocking his keyboard into a portrait of him with his blonde, overly made-up, fortysomething wife and two overweight teenage daughters.

  “What the hell is this?” he asks. His eyes are glued to it. Mine are glued to his. His confidence is shedding into confusion.

  I don’t speak.

  Then a thought occurs to me. What if this is a trap? What if my masked captors have nothing inside the envelope? Stan will lash out and fire me on the spot after I demand the government contract recruiter spot. Maybe they want me to get fired so that I will look even crazier when I do start to litigate. There’s still every chance they
were plants, sent to knock me off my game.

  My nerves flutter. I consider pulling back the envelope.

  Too late; he grabs it.

  My mouth is dry. I try to open it to speak but can’t find my words.

  He pulls open the flap, then slides the contents out.

  His eyes are narrowed as he tries to make out whatever it is. Then they go wide. Shock splashes across his face. Then horror.

  I try to peer over to see the pages as he flips through, but I can only see the backs of each.

  He’s going through them one after another in rapid succession. He’s red. Anger creases appear across his face.

  He looks up at me. His forehead crinkles, eyes focus on me, and his bottom jaw bulges forward.

  “Close the fucking door,” he shouts.

  I get up and close it.

  “If you want to live, you are going to tell me where you got these.”

  I watch him intently. Whatever is in the folder must be bad. Very bad. I’ve got him on the hook. This isn’t a sham—I’ve actually got him.

  My confidence comes back.

  “No. You aren’t the one calling the shots anymore.”

  He scoffs as if what I said was absolute hilarity.

  “Stan, if you don’t want those to go public, then you are going to do exactly as I say.”

  He’s incredulous. He thinks I’m joking.

  “If you want these never to be seen, then you are going to get me the government contracts recruiter spot that just opened up.”

  He laughs. Then he laughs some more. The smirk on his face makes me want to grab him by his tie and strangle him. After a few more laughs, he watches me. Studies me.

  “David, you are young and naive.” He’s intentionally using his Bronx accent. It’s part of his play. “Yesterday you call me out at your wife’s funeral—some nerve by the way. If she hadn’t just died, I would have pinned you to a curb and stomped your head. Today you come back to work, think you can blackmail me, and then ask me of all people to get you a position that is only given to senior lawyers after at least ten years with us. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  He’s trying to strong-arm me. This is how he got where he is. This is why I—and everyone else who knows him—hate him.

  I can see right through it.

  He’s scared. He’s in defense mode. I’ve got him right where I want him.

  I have the upper hand.

  “Cut the bullshit. You have until six this evening to get me the position. You try to pull anything, and the folder goes public. Anything happens to me, I have someone who will sure as hell release the copies for the world to see. Capiche?”

  He glares. He wants to lash out. He wants to threaten me, but he knows whatever is inside the folder is serious.

  “Get the hell out of here,” he finally says.

  I stand.

  “Six p.m.,” I say as I turn to the door. I don’t look back.

  Damn that felt good. Will he actually get me the position, though? I’m sure he is scheming through ways to screw me. All I can do is wait.

  . . .

  I glance at the clock on my desktop.

  5:56 p.m.

  I haven’t seen Stan come out of his office all day.

  I’m the second-to-last employee left in a sea of windowless cubicles. God, I hate this place.

  My plan has surely backfired somehow. But what do I do?

  A door opens a few cubicle rows over.

  Stan walks out of an office.

  Without even a glance in my direction, he proceeds to the elevator.

  Shit.

  It didn’t work. What do I do? Will they really post whatever was inside the envelope? We will lose all the leverage we have.

  And now I realize what he’s doing. He’s calling my bluff.

  A second later my computer chimes and a new e-mail appears.

  I click into it.

  Subject: FWD: FWD: FWD: Government Contracts Recruiter

  David Higgins has been selected as the next government contracts recruiter, Lobbyist Division, effective immediately. Salary $355,000, benefits remain the same. Nonnegotiable. Have him report to Rebecca Schooner at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow.

  Robert Chow

  Senior VP of Operations, American True Care

  Holy cow.

  Blood rushes through my body, and I can’t contain my grin. I want to jump out of my seat and celebrate. I don’t know whether to be more excited that the plan worked or that the money is so good. $355,000?

  Hurriedly, I power down my computer, then head for the elevator.

  . . .

  I’m sitting on my yellow couch, still in the white button-down and slacks I wore to work. It took a while to come down from my high, but now my excitement has turned into nerves. Why hasn’t the masked duo called?

  The grief I’ve been avoiding starts to settle in the pit of my stomach.

  I gaze over at the picture hanging in the kitchen of me and Lexi strolling along the beach. It’s the one Evan took when Lexi and I first started dating. He and Christie had big news they wanted to announce over dinner and invited us for a walk along the coast of Laguna Beach. Later they took us to a seaside Italian restaurant that typically took months to get reservations for. It was that night that they announced they were having a baby, and it was a boy. It was also the night Evan announced he would be quitting his dream job at the Los Angeles Times to take a gig at the local OC Times that allowed him to work from home. That way he could be a stay-at-home dad while Christie became the primary provider.

  I wanted to ask him if he was making the right decision. To ask him if he was happy with Christie. But I didn’t. I could tell he was. His ambitions weren’t the same as mine. He laughed and grinned all night long. It was on our way home that night that I learned another fact about Lexi that made me fall for her even more. Like me, she didn’t want kids. It hadn’t ever been something we’d talked about until that night, but I know that, in the back of our heads, it was something we both worried about. Neither of us had traditional family upbringings, and neither of us felt we could ever be unselfish enough to raise a child. We both wanted to travel. We wanted to go out whenever and wherever we wanted with whomever. Not to mention the fact that not having kids would mean a much, much earlier retirement.

  I’m awoken from my daze when I feel a buzzing in my pocket. Out of instinct, I grab for the burner phone and flip it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Do you have news for us?” the familiar but eerily deep voice asks.

  “It worked. I start tomorrow.”

  “Good.”

  The line goes silent, and I pull back to make sure it hasn’t disconnected.

  “Hello?” I ask.

  “Listen to me very carefully. This is going to move very fast. They need to think that you are in their wheelhouse. There can’t be one shred of doubt, because the moment they find out, you’re done. If anyone besides Stan gets wind of your stunt at your wife’s funeral, you’ll have some real work to do to persuade them that it was the grief talking. Once you get your first prospect, let us know, and we will work with you. We need to get proof of what you are selling, and who is buying it. You will be mixing with some powerful people, and the consequences will be dire if you get caught. But remember why you are doing this. For Lexi.”

  Her name is like a dagger through my heart. They are trying to manipulate me.

  “Leave her out of it,” I snap.

  The line is silent.

  “When you get your first assignment, call this number. And when you get back, we will meet again, this time, face-to-face.”

  I take down the number, and the line goes dead.

  Chapter 6

  I’ve been waiting more than twenty minutes. I forced myself to take two sleeping pills last night to make sure I got enough sleep for this moment.

  The expansive, hazy glass door opens.

  “Mr. Higgins?” calls a throaty woman’s voice.

  I g
et up and iron out my suit pants with my hands. Then I walk through the door.

  “Yes, and you must be Ms. Schooner?” I say as I make my way across the marble floor. A thirtysomething, mixed-race woman—probably Japanese and African American—looks up from her computer in acknowledgment. She sits at a glass desk in front of a tinted-glass window overlooking the Pasadena country club. She’s wearing deep-red lipstick and has her hair pulled back into a professional bun. She’s dressed in a black, sleeveless dress, and she looks intimidating. She knows it too. Lobbyists are attractive by nature, and they use it to their advantage to get deals with politicians done.

  “Rebecca,” she corrects me curtly. “Sit.”

  I can already tell this isn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

  I take a seat in an extremely comfy, plush leather chair. Of course, the big ups get lavish offices, while the lowly employees are packed away into cubicles like sardines.

  “Let’s get this out of the way. You obviously weren’t my choice for the position, and I haven’t a clue who you are. I don’t care whose dick you sucked to get this spot, but you’re here, so don’t fuck it up.”

  I try to suppress my smile. I nod.

  “First things first. We are going to need you to sign this NDA.”

  She slides a piece of paper and a pen over to me. I glance down at the nondisclosure agreement and scan the language.

  This wasn’t something I anticipated—although I should have. This could actually prove troublesome.

  But there’s no other way.

  I scribble some cursive on the dotted line.

  “Good. And here is the Lobbyist Code of Ethics. Be sure to give it a gander.”

  She places a large binder in front of me. It has to be more than two hundred pages thick. I put it on my lap, feeling its weight on my knee.

  “So here are the rules. You will go where you are told, meet with who you’re told to, and do whatever you are told to do to make sure what we want gets passed. If you screw it up, you better believe we will come after you. It will be far worse than a simple firing. Understood?”