by Schow, Ryan
“I’ll let you know when I get there, and where we’re staying. If it makes you comfortable, I’ll give you my entire itinerary.”
“Ain’t no big thing but a chicken wing,” he says. “Just hit me with a text, or whatever.”
When my father started talking like this, he didn’t have the right tone, so he sounded like a freaking tool bag. It was humiliating to say the least. Since then he’s gotten the tone and the body language right, so rather than being annoying, he’s just plain funny. I wish I could laugh though. But I can’t. My brain weighs a thousand pounds right now and—my lips to God’s ears—these are dark times.
I give Rebecca and my father a hug, then we head outside and get into Brayden’s hearse. The way he has this whole thing planned out, I have no choice but to trust him. And I do trust him.
On the way out of the neighborhood, we pass Margaret. She waves and so Brayden waves. And me? I look the other way.
“Did I ever tell you your mom is hot?” I roll my eyes, ignore the comment. Freaking turncoat. Brayden says, “Serious, though, she doesn’t seem so bad.”
“It’s a phase,” I tell him, putting on my oversized sunglasses. “Turn on the radio.”
“Please?”
“Turn on the radio, please.”
We drive throughout the better part of the day, stopping for gas, snacks and lunch around one in the afternoon. When we get to Santa Barbara, we rent a Dodge Charger and drive to an impound lot where Brayden pays the guy to hold his car overnight, no questions asked. I tell him I’m amazed at how deep his criminal connections run and he tells me leaving his car at an impound lot isn’t criminal. He says it just makes sense.
We drive the rest of the way south in the Charger, then find the nearest Best Western, which is in Santa Monica, about fifteen miles from downtown L.A. “It’s not the Four Seasons,” he says as we pull into the lot and park, “but they won’t be looking for us here. And besides, with my fake ID, the trail will end in Santa Barbara. If they even get that far.”
“Who are ‘they?’” I ask.
He shuts off the engine, shrugs his shoulders and says, “Anyone looking, I suppose.”
“I didn’t read the list,” I finally admit. I’m not making any moves to get out of the car just yet. “You know, the list of mistakes killers make?”
“I know.”
“As long as it didn’t seem real, I told myself I could do it. But if it started to feel real—”
“You’d get a case of the chickenshits.”
“Exactly.”
We head into the lobby and pay the deposit on a third floor room with two queen beds and a view of the swamp cooler and the parking lot. I unpack my overnight essentials while Brayden goes out to find and steal the license plate on a similar Dodge Charger. He says it’s necessary. That it pertains to the list. When he gets back, he looks impressed with himself, and I don’t blame him. So far, I’m pretty impressed myself.
He plops down on his bed, then looks at me on my bed and says, “I feel so far away from you.” Granted, we’ve been traveling together all day.
“It feels good,” I tease.
“In the morning, I’ll let you watch the videos,” Brayden says. “Ten minutes into them and you’ll see why we need to do this.”
“Can’t we just report Demetrius to the authorities?” I hear myself say.
“He’ll get off. Our evidence was procured without a warrant, and this guy is worth about forty-seven million. A sizeable chunk of that can be liquidated in less than ten days. He could disappear, just like he said. But guys like this, with their lawyers, the reality is they will devour anything in their path. You and me included. It’s why he’s such a bully. And why we can’t go to the authorities.”
“Maggie’s father is no lightweight.”
“You said it yourself, though. They lost their daughter to suicide. Right now they think it was because she was depressed. How do you think her father will feel knowing his daughter was raped and he could’ve done something to protect her, but he didn’t? He’ll always wonder if she died because he was too eager to get her a recording contract. It would be his fault, not hers. This will ruin him.”
“I know,” I say, my voice falling into a quiet resignation. The swamp cooler is now just white noise, and a welcomed sound.
“Plus, the minute his lawyer looks into you, he’s going to see you don’t really exist, and it could expose you and your father. Everyone would know what you’ve done, who you are. They would know about Gerhard and Astor Academy and everything.”
“I know.”
“We need to do this, Abby. We can do this.”
I get up, turn the swamp cooler onto LOW. It’s not cool in Santa Monica, even at this time of night. Returning to the über-cozy bed, I pull off my shoes, un-tuck my shirt, then fluff the pillow and stretch out. I can’t stop the yawn from coming. It feels good. Like I’ll be able to get a decent night’s rest.
“Whatever you’re trying to spare Maggie’s family from,” I tell Brayden, “by planning this with me, you’re about to take the full weight of it on your own shoulders.”
“I have the videos,” he says. “Any time I start feeling bad, I have them to remind me why of we did what we’re going to do.”
“That’s all great, in theory.”
“I can handle it.”
“I’m not sure you can,” I say, admiring his bolstered confidence. That he’s here with me now, sitting in this motel room, planning to right this incredible wrong, it makes me even more attracted to him, not as a friend—or even as a potential girlfriend—but as a girl attracted to a boy simply because she likes and respects him.
“Isn’t this what we learned at Astor?” he argues. “Isn’t this how the higher echelons of power work? First the carrot, then the stick? We’re just bypassing the carrot. And the stick?—it’s really a gun. It’s justice. Besides, the rich have people killed all the time, you know, over money or sex, or as some kind of cover up. With us, it’s not like that.”
I feel my insides winding up too tight. Maybe it’s because I’m tired, or scared, or so out of sorts I feel like screaming. My agitation is on the rise.
“I know,” I say, using sarcasm to mask what just might be some sort of impending meltdown. “It’ll be a noble cause.”
“Look, we’re old enough and smart enough to do this. And you know we need to do this otherwise he’ll keep on raping and ruining girls’ lives. Abs, it’s our responsibility.”
“F*ck, Brayden, I know!” I blurt out, the tension finally spilling over. I roll over in bed and think about crying. Back when I could cry over just about anything, or puke up all my bad feelings, I didn’t really have to deal with stuff as much as I just had to stop crying or clean up my vomit. Now, incapacitated from my old securities, I have to be an adult. I have to make good decisions. “I just…I need to make sure I don’t go to pieces in there when I do it.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.”
My entire body stiffens and I roll over fast, too aggressive, like I’m ready to have the biggest fight ever.
“You’re not going in there and that’s final.”
“Something could happen to you, though,” he says softly, ignoring my line in the sand. I see how tired he looks from the drive and it has me feeling sorry for him.
He continues speaking.
“You could choke,” he says. “You see it in the movies all the time. The slightest hesitation, it’s enough to get you killed. I think I should pull the trigger.”
“The authorities don’t have my DNA on file, but they have yours,” I say, tempering my voice. “I may not have studied the mistakes killers make, but even I know about trace evidence. And you have it. You’re the one with a federal arrest record, not me.”
“You need your head straight, Abby. That’s why I suggest we hit the clubs tonight. Or watch a porno or something. You need to get out of your own mind.”
The thing I love about Brayden is he knows how t
o diffuse a tough situation with comedy. And even though I play coy, I like that he’s this way.
“I’m not sitting in a hotel room watching porn with you, Brayden.” The fires of agitation inside me are swiftly cooling. Rational minds are prevailing.
“Jesus, relax. They don’t even have porn in this place. I’m cracking jokes is all.”
“Well they’re not funny,” I lie.
“I know.”
We sit on our queen-sized beds in silence for a long minute. He kicks off his shoes and makes a big production of it. When he’s done he blows out a long breath and says, “If you don’t want to do this, we don’t have to. We can just go home tomorrow morning and forget about it.”
“Let me think.”
He sits up fast, burns me with a glare. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
“It’s barely eleven!”
Kicking the comforter off the bed, he says, “That’s why I’m thinking we should invest in the power of distraction. Sometimes to solve a problem you have to step away from the problem. By the way, you don’t know how much come is on that thing, so you should just follow my lead and not sit there.”
He’s talking about the comforter. Ew.
“First off, gross. Second, I’m not going to a club, Brayden,” I say, scooting off my comforter. “I don’t care how cool or unique the experience will be.”
“Jeez, you don’t have to be such a buzz kill.” When I don’t take the bait, he says, “Would you mind terribly if I checked the mini-fridge for drinks?”
“You’re a big boy, Brayden. Do what you want. Just don’t get drunk and try slipping into my bed tonight.”
For the smallest second, he makes a screwy face, but then he recovers quickly. “There aren’t any alcoholic drinks in the mini-fridge,” he says with traces of humor in his voice, “and how did you know I was going to do that anyway?”
“Because you have a penis,” I mumble.
“That I do.”
6
The thing about cell phones these days is they can be hacked and tracked by just about anyone with the right technology and a little know-how. For Brayden, this sort of thing comes easy. Too easy. The way our “secure systems” can so easily be compromised, it makes me wonder if we ever had any privacy at all.
Probably not.
Not unless you do what me and my father did, which is install proprietary encryption software in pretty much anything that can be remotely compromised. Which is everything “smart” these days.
Outerscope Records sits in a small industrial-style building just off the Santa Monica Freeway on Olympic Avenue. Brayden points out a black Mercedes-Benz, a long S600 that’s lowered on deep-dish chrome rims with blacked-out windows, and he says, “That’s his. The plate matches.”
I don’t say anything because I’m still traumatized from watching the videos Demetrius saved on his hard drive. Brayden forced me to watch all of them this morning. As promised.
“We know he’ll be there until twelve-forty five. According to his online itinerary, at one o’clock he’s having lunch with a girl named Sunday Jones and her manager—a prospective singer I assume—at The Buffalo Club, also on Olympic Avenue, but closer to 14th Street. The Buffalo Club is supposed to be some high-brow bar slash eatery owned by the guy who created Miami Vice. Anyway, we just need to lay eyes on him, to size him up. That way we know what you’re dealing with.”
“I saw him in the videos,” I say, having a hard time unseeing him and the things he’s done, “so I know exactly what I’m up against.”
The way this unholy piece of dog crap shattered the innocence of so many young girls, he will get exactly what he deserves. We pull away from the curb, turn around and head for downtown Santa Monica.
“He may be bigger in person,” Brayden warns.
“Won’t matter.”
“It will matter,” he argues. “Everything matters.”
In the heart of downtown Santa Monica, at the Café Demitasse in the Third Street Promenade, I end up ordering the most amazing Espresso ever. It almost makes me forget everything I’ve done. Who I am. The things I’m about to do.
Brayden says when a murder is committed, cops rely heavily on surveillance cameras. He tells me after we kill Demetrius, detectives will pull video surveillance from the areas the victim frequented that day. He’ll be looking for us, the killers.
“So we need to assume we’re being watched all the time?” I say.
“Pretty much.”
We’re silent for a long time, sipping our coffees, watching the pedestrians and fellow caffeine junkies. Brayden finally breaks the silence to ask about Rebecca. “What if we just keep Rebecca for ourselves? You know, not find her parents? I can do that. If you want me to, I can not find them.”
“I’ve been thinking of that.”
“It would be selfish, but she seems happy.”
“I know.”
To me, having Rebecca around is like having a sister, a best friend, someone who knows me only as I am, not the three versions before me.
“But you want to keep her anyway,” Brayden says, “don’t you?”
I swallow the last of my coffee. Instead of responding, I just look away and nod.
“Me, too.”
“You should have seen the look on her face when she told me she remembered her mother,” I tell him. It was the first time I think I really saw her smile. “She was so excited.”
“Like I said, it would be selfish not to try.”
“That’s why we have to find her parents,” I tell him. “We can’t keep her from them if that will make her whole again.”
“I know.”
“Of course, keeping her wouldn’t be the worst decision we’ve made this week.”
He smiles at my attempt to bring humor into an otherwise impossible situation. It’s a nice smile. Especially with the work done to his eyelids, nose and chin.
Looking at him, I say, “If I ever leave Palo Alto, remind me to move here. I swear to Jesus this place is perfect for me.”
“Yeah, well Santa Monica is only a slice of L.A. County. You should see downtown L.A., the nice parts.”
“Um, no thanks,” I say, wishing I had more coffee. “Here is good. Here is all I’d need.”
7
There’s something terribly off right now. Even though the California sun is doing its job by brightening the day, the energy seems all wrong. It’s me, I know. But still. Maybe it’s a premonition. A bad omen. Either way, I’m feeling like my soul is not right with my body and maybe it’s time to abandon ship.
“I think I need to lay down,” I tell Brayden.
“I feel it, too.”
“That sort of yuckiness in the air?”
He nods. Then he says, “It’s almost one. So after we see him at The Buffalo Club, we’ll head back to the motel.”
I almost beg him not to go there.
A few minutes later we pull in front of the restaurant, our eyes probing the building for exterior mounted cameras. This being an industrial area, I don’t see any. Or maybe I’m not supposed to see any. Brayden says he doesn’t see any cameras either, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any, so we try to act as normal as possible.
When the pig known as Demetrius Giardino pulls up and gets out of his black Benz, a sharp, seething hatred blossoms within me and I know for certain I won’t chicken out. That feeling I’ve been having, that thing casting darkness and nausea all over my world, it settles. I am finally at peace with what I’m going to do.
“He’s every bit as revolting as I expected,” I say.
Brayden doesn’t say a word. Not until we get to the motel. When he finally speaks, I know I will never again have to wonder how he feels about Maggie.
“When those guys beat me with their belts, when they pissed on me, I felt worthless and weak. Any bit of joy I found in my life was blotted out. I’m not sure what it’s like to be raped, to be violated to that degree, but I do know what it’s like
to feel beaten and helpless. To feel so utterly defenseless. What Maggie endured, it was unforgivable.”
“I can’t stop seeing those poor girls,” I hear myself say. Every one of those girls were forced to have sex for their contract. Demetrius’s home movies go back a long time. One of the girls, a pop-star now gracing the top of the charts, she looked ten years younger on film. It’s hard to imagine someone putting something like that behind them.
“When Maggie…did what she did…I understood the depth of her pain. It sparked something in me. The memory. All the details of my defining tragedy. I freaking hate the Demetrius Giardino’s of the world and I’m glad you’re going to kill him.”
8
Back at the motel room, I manage to get a few hours sleep, but it’s fitful and I wake up feeling agitated. Brayden is asleep next to me. On my bed. Having done exactly what I told him not to do last night.
Oh, well.
I give him a gentle nudge, tell him it’s time. He rolls over and looks at me with tired eyes.
“I need to call my dad,” I say. My phone has been off, the battery pulled out ever since we left town, per Brayden’s instructions. My father must be worried sick.
He shakes his head. “No, they can trace your phone records.”
“My phone is different—”
“It’s too risky.”
We argue this point a little more, but then I drop it because it’s useless. He read the list, I didn’t. That’s what he keeps saying, and dammit, he’s right. Phone records are one of the go-to places the cops look when trying to establish your whereabouts on the day of the crime. Brayden said it was best not to give off any signal at all.
He checks the GPS locator on his phone and I ask him why he gets to use a phone when I can’t. I ask him why we can’t call my father from his phone.
“Because this is a dummy phone not registered to anyone. It cost a fortune and I don’t want it compromised.”
“Does this have to do with the FBI?”
“Everything I do and don’t do on computers or phones with internet access has to do with the FBI. It’s what happens when you get caught. And Abby?”