by Sandra Block
He stares at me hard. I recognize this as some detective technique meant to unnerve me, and oddly enough, it does. He stands up, hitting the partition again. “Thank you for your time.” He reaches over to hand me a card, and I take it. “If you think of anything.”
“Of course.”
As he walks away, I think of Vihaan Patel, the name that didn’t fit in with the WASP-y ones above and below it, and where I’ve seen it before.
On the list of Hawk Club members.
• • •
“You really think they were targeting you?” James wipes some mayonnaise off his chin.
“I don’t even think it’s a question,” I answer, scooping a potato cube from my tasteless vegetable soup. “And they weren’t subtle either. This Sergei guy tried to rape her. Said he was sending a message.”
James pauses. “Pretty clear what that is, huh?”
“Yeah. Cease and desist.”
His face is troubled. “Seems like they upped their game a bit now.”
“I’d say.”
James swallows a large bite of his sub. He eats a ton of food before “swim nights.” Where he swims the length of a marathon, or some such. “So, what do you want to do?” James asks.
A guy from the mail room walks by us, and we smile at him. He goes into the corner with his friends. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“Do you want to keep going with this? Or not. Because we don’t have to,” he stresses. “Not at all.”
“Stop asking me that, James. Of course,” I say. “Of course we keep going.”
“But listen,” he says in a low voice. “This is serious—”
“No,” I say. “Listen to me. Vihaan does not win. Sergei does not win. The Hawk Club does not win. Not this time.” I notice people looking over at us, and I lower my voice. My face feels overheated. “We win,” I say more quietly. “We nail all these bastards, and we get that fucking cigar box too. We’re shutting the whole thing down. It ends now. Here.” I look at my hands, which are trembling. Obviously, the Alethia attack upset me more than I am admitting. “This is where it ends.”
James stares at me for a second. He crumples up his sub wrapper. “Okay,” he agrees, but sounds reluctant. “But we’ll have to be careful.”
“Yes,” I say, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “I know.”
“Oh, I should tell you.” James glances around the room, to make sure it’s empty. “I hacked into Holstein’s school account.”
“Of course you did,” I say with a little smile.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “They really should have a better security system. But I can’t help that.”
“No, you certainly can’t.” I swallow a mushy pea, then push the soup to the side. “So, what should we do to him?”
James leans back in his chair, his white shirt straining at the button on his chest. From the swimming marathons, I suppose. I wonder when I’ll get to see that chest again. Once more, I get that quivery feeling.
“I did have an idea,” he says, “but it’s kind of mean.”
“Mean is okay. In this scenario.”
He leans over the table for privacy, though no one else is in the room. “I was thinking,” he says in a near whisper. “We could put pornography up on his work site.”
I rap my fingers on the table, thinking. “Wouldn’t send him to jail though. Just get him fired.” A bird chirps outside, a high-pitched trill. “Let me think about it,” I say, standing up. “Meanwhile, I should probably send Alethia some flowers.”
James stands up too, stretching out his chest again. “Maybe you should send them to Sergei instead,” he says.
And we both have a little chuckle at that one.
Chapter Fifty-Two
HAWK CLUB CHAT ROOM
Bruinsblow: WTF? He got the wrong girl?
Joe25: No, it’s worse than that. He got the wrong girl, AND she beat him up.
PorscheD: Hahahahahaha
Taxman: Sergei, Sergei
Desiforever: Fuck you man, this shit isn’t funny.
Holts: It is *sort of* funny.
Desiforever: Well I’m glad you’re laughing. Had to pay my lawyer like 15 G to get me out of this shit. I came up with a pretend job for Sergei on one of our Boston sites.
Bruinsblow: So we’re back to our original problem then
Mollysdad: Which is?
Bruinsblow: Dahlia.
Holts: Why do you got such a hard-on for this girl, bro? She’s not coming after you.
Creoletransplant: We don’t even know she’s coming after anyone, right? Could just be Cary G.
Joe225: Or he might have actually been dealing. Maybe it had nothing to do with her.
Porsche18: Yeah, dude. I seriously think you’re overreacting.
Bruinsblow: Right, well, I’m not waiting to go to jail because some bitch regrets going to a party. Watching her pick us off one by one.
Holts: And then there were none.
Desiforever: Really fucking funny
Bruinsblow: We need a plan. Sergei fucked up. And now she’s probably been warned.
Desiforever: Does Blake know he’s on the tape?
Bruinsblow: Yeah, he knows. He doesn’t give a shit though. Said they can’t touch him. Honestly, he’s kind of an asshole now.
Mollysdad: He’s always been an asshole
Holts: But he’s right. He’ll beat that shit. He’s got like a billion dollars
Desiforever: Not *like* a billion dollars. An actual billion dollars
Creoletransplant: Anyway
PorscheD: He’s right though. She can’t touch any of us.
Bruinsblow: I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I went after the tape cuts out. But who knows how much more was on that tape? She could have video of me too. All of us.
Mollysdad: Yeah, I don’t want that coming back to me either. None of us do.
PorscheD: So what do we do about it? Send her another message?
Taxman: Yeah, that worked so well last time
Desiforever: Fuck you, Mike. It isn’t my fault the Russian was a fucking idiot
Bruinsblow: Yo, guys. Focus here. What are we going to do?
Mollysdad: I say we wait. Let Blake deal with her. She’ll be toast then.
Taxman: Not an unreasonable plan
Creoletransplant: Cosign
Joe225: So talk to Blake again. He’s got the most connections.
Desiforever: Yeah. He could fuck that girl up in a million different ways.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Five Years Ago
The doorbell pierces through my hazy, pot-infused dreams.
I lift my head, then let it drop again. It feels too heavy to stay up. Besides, it’s probably Shoshana’s boyfriend. Who else would be ringing the doorbell at this ungodly hour? I hear voices on the doorstep, my mom’s fake and chipper. Which means it’s someone she doesn’t know very well. The sound of footsteps and more voices coming into the house.
I squint at my clock, which tells me it’s almost noon. My stomach rumbles, confirming this. Wearily, I sit up, rubbing crust from my eyes.
“Dahlia?” My mom is calling.
“I’m up,” I call back. We’ve regressed to our high school relationship of her nagging me every morning to wake up.
The door flings open. “Someone’s here for you,” my mom says.
I throw on pajama bottoms, which don’t fit very well after my munchies-and-pot summer, wondering who the hell it could be. “Who is it? Someone from work?”
“No,” she answers. She runs her hand through her hair, which I notice for the first time is flecked with gray. “It’s Eli.”
“Eli?” I practically leap off the bed. “Why didn’t you say?” I rush past her.
“I was saying,” she answers, behind
me now.
I run into him and nearly bowl him over. “Eli, Eli, Eli, Eli!”
“Dahlia, Dahlia, Dahlia, Dahlia!” he yells back as we giggle and hug.
“Nice tat,” he says, eyeing my arm.
“Yes,” I say. “Potential employers will love it, methinks.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom smile at our interaction, probably misunderstanding completely, and back away into the kitchen. “You just came to visit? I don’t see any luggage.” I peek through the front window on the empty porch, though there’s a car in the driveway.
“Nope, no luggage. I just came to save you.”
“To save me?”
“Yup. From your dreary existence.”
“Oookay,” I draw out the word. “And how does this work? I was growing a bit fond of my dreary existence.”
He drops his backpack on the floor and sits on the love seat, patting for me to sit next to him, which I do. “Now, listen closely,” he says, “I am your intervention.”
“Let me guess: you love me to death, but you don’t like what the pot is doing to me.”
“Something like that. I’m taking you away, m’lady. I am your knight in shining armor.”
I guffaw. “Do I get to request a straight one?”
“Overrated,” he says. “Now, pay attention. First, we drive to Boston.”
“Boston?” My heart ticks up a beat. “What’s in Boston?”
“Your new apartment and job.”
I look for a sign that he’s joking and find none. “I think you’ve been smoking too much dope.”
“That may or may not be so, but let’s focus here.”
“Okay.” I point from my eyes to his eyes, establishing my laser-like focus.
“Living at home is not good for you,” he says in a low voice.
I nod in admission. “Confirmed.”
Eli continues, “I have a charming—that means small—apartment near the city. Cheap. There’s a room available on the fourth floor.”
“Okay.” I feel a touch of nerves, but also a pulse of excitement.
“I have a job as a paralegal.”
I stare at him. “Really?”
“Really. They’re looking for someone else, and I showed them your résumé.”
“You don’t even have my résumé.”
“I made one up.”
I snort. “This is a promising start. Did I win the Pulitzer?”
“They want to interview you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I stand up from the couch. “That’s impossible.”
Right then, my dad enters the room. “I think it sounds like a good plan,” he says.
I roll my eyes, regressing yet again. “How long have you been listening?”
“Long enough to know this young man has his head on his shoulders,” he answers. Eli gives him his best son-you-never-had smile, which my father returns in spades. “You don’t need to stay cooped up here,” my father continues. “Go to Boston. Have some fun. Then you can go back to college.”
In other words: “Get your gloomy, pot-infested, ever-expanding ass out of my house.”
But I can’t say it sounds like a bad idea either.
“Come on,” Eli says. “Let’s pack.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Dahlia
I decide to take Shoshana’s advice and apply for the Stanford summer program after all. Connor said he’d write a letter of recommendation. I probably won’t even get in. And if I do, I can figure out how to pay for it then. I’m trying to figure out how to tell James about this, sipping from my COFFEE mug, when I am hit with an inspiration.
Got an idea for Holstein, I text James.
What?
Tell you in just a bit. Let me see what I can dig up first.
Okay
I put the phone in my drawer again. “Do you remember that case you were working on a couple years ago?” I ask Sylvia. “The trafficking one for Dicamillo?”
“Yeah. She left the firm after that. Went with the DA.” Sylvia wipes her already-raw nose and drops the wadded tissue into her garbage bin, already three-quarters filled with other used tissues. “What about it?”
“I have to look it up for someone in criminal. Do you remember the defendant’s name?”
“Dodson,” she says with a grimace. “Could never forget it. Sick piece of shit.” She wipes her nose again. “I think he’s in jail now at least.”
“That’s good. One less pustule on the face of humanity.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “I guess you could put it that way. Anyway, I don’t remember the other names. I probably blocked them from my memory.”
“Dodson’s good enough.” I stand up. “In storage, I would think. Hopefully, it’s still on site.”
“Who needs it, anyway?” She blows theatrically into another tissue.
“Keegan, I think?” I pick one of the shyer lawyer’s names, then stand up and push my chair into the desk. “No time like the present.”
“You go, girl,” she says, turning back to her computer.
So I go, taking the elevator down to the creepy, musty basement, where the old files are stored. Watkins, an elderly African American security guard, sits at his post, reading a book.
“Busy, huh?” I ask, flashing my badge.
“Ghost town,” he grumbles. “Where you been anyway? I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age.”
“Yeah,” I say, not really wanting to chitchat. “Just staying out of trouble.”
Watkins looks down at my arm, the tattoos peeking out of my sleeve. “You get yourself a new tattoo?” he asks with a tsk-tsk to his voice. “Why you wanna do that? Ruin that nice arm of yours.”
“You sound like my dad, Watkins,” I say with a smile.
“Well, he got some sense then,” he huffs. “All these kids writing all over their bodies.”
“I’m looking for a file,” I say. “Dodson.”
“Dodson,” he repeats, standing from his stool and wincing while reaching for his back. “Let me lead you to the Ds.”
I follow him through the maze of dusty shelves, and after weaving through many rows, we end up at the right spot.
“Have at it,” he says, then turns to go back to his post. “Let me know if you can’t find it.”
“Will do.”
The file drawer sticks, and I yank at it, finding the papers in the back curling up over the others. I leaf through the files for a good ten minutes before finding one with a black star sticker at the top. With some effort, I pull it out, then lean against a shelf to read through it.
The black star is appropriate.
It’s beyond awful. It’s vile. It’s worse than my video.
With the file under my arm, I weave my way back to Watkins. “I got it,” I announce. He nods and turns back to his book. So I take the file to the copy machine and make ten revolting color copies as the light flashes over and over, burning lines into my retinas.
I get back to the desk with the copies in my hand like a weight. I text James.
All set for Holstein. Meet after work?
“Did they have what you needed?” Sylvia asks, digging into a new tissue box.
“Yup,” I answer as James texts me back in the affirmative. “Lucky for me, it didn’t go off-site yet,” I say, stashing my purse under my desk.
“I don’t know about lucky,” she says with a shiver. “I still have nightmares over that case.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
James
“Here it is,” she says, handing me a manila envelope. “The whole repulsive thing.”
We sit on the T for a moment, in a full train. Dry heat pours in through the heaters and my hoodie feels too hot over my shirt, but our knees are touching, so I don’t even mind. Cooper’s borrowing my car. I
wouldn’t loan it to anyone else, except maybe Dahlia. But he needed it, and he’s pretty much my only friend.
“So,” she says in a low voice. “What are you going to do with it?”
I lean closer to her so no one else hears. “Put it on his hard drive. Won’t be hard. Should take like five minutes.”
She does this twisty thing with her lips, which she does when she’s unsure about something. It’s actually really cute, but she’d be terrible at poker. She comes so close that I can see every eyelash. “But couldn’t they trace it back to you?”
For a second, I think she’s kidding, but she’s not. “No. I mean…I’m not going to use my own IP, right?”
“Right,” she says, doing that twisty thing again.
“I’ll encrypt it definitely,” I assure her.
She nods, like she doesn’t totally get it, but that’s fine. Not everyone gets computers, which my mom reminded me is why I have a job. Thinking of my mom makes me think about Ramona. And Rob. And what Jamal said and how I should tell her. But, of course, I can’t tell her in the middle of the subway.
“Then you’ll call the guy?” I ask. “The principal?”
“Yeah,” she says, but she doesn’t sound excited about it.
A pregnant woman in a hijab gets on. I stand up to let her sit because you’re supposed to, and my father once screamed at me when I didn’t. Dahlia looks at me with such an admiring look that I’m happy I did it. She stands up too and puts her hand on top of mine on the pole. We hold hands sometimes. I used to think that was a pathetic and unhygienic way to show off your mated status. But now I think it’s just holding hands.
We swing back and forth, and she leans her body against me. Like she’s claiming me. I remember seeing other people leaning together and wondering if I would ever do that. Which makes me smile, because now I am. The train jolts to a stop and we bang against each other a little and then get off at Harvard station. She’s got her class tonight.
“I’ll walk you there, okay?” I ask, as we get off the train.
“You don’t have to.”
“Just for company.” My voice echoes in the gray, dingy station.
“Okay,” she says and we climb up the stairs together. I stuff my cold hands in my hoodie pockets.