by Sandra Block
I nod at this, heartened. “So, can we do it then?”
“Of course we can do it. We can prosecute them… Well, I can call the DA,” he amends. “I can’t be the lead man, but I can help out—”
“A civil suit,” I say. “That’s what I want. I want to sue them.”
“Them.” He pauses. “The Hawk Club?”
“Yes,” I say. “The other women can decide if they want to prosecute their attackers. I’ll leave that up to them as soon as we reach them all. But I don’t want that myself. I want to sue. Sue the whole club.”
“Okay.” He relaxes in his chair, as we’re back in his comfort zone. “Civil suit. That’d be an easy one.” Now he grins. “With those tapes, we could even file a mass action.”
“Yes,” I agree. “If that’s what the other women want.”
He starts jotting down something on his canary-yellow legal pad with a studious expression.
I lean over the rounded corner of the desk. “How much money are we talking here?” I ask. “Do you have any idea?”
He looks up from the pad. “I hate talking numbers when I don’t have the basics of the case put together yet, but—”
“I’m not looking to get rich,” I explain. “I mean, not that I mind profiting off their suffering. I don’t. But I just want it to hurt. Bad. Put-them-out-of-business bad.”
He pauses, stares at me a second, then gives me a smile that is almost rueful. “We can do that, Dahlia. That’s my job. And I’m good at it.” He looks at the window then. “Sometimes I feel bad about that fact. When you’re bankrupting some poor bastard who doesn’t even see it coming. But not today,” he says. “Not that place. I’ll take every single goddamn cent they have, and then some.”
I pat the desk. “Good,” I say. “Just let me know what you need from me.” I stand up to leave.
“Oh,” he says. “Before you go. Dennis called me. You’re all set. All the paperwork has been filed.”
“So?”
“So, you are you again,” he says with a grin.
“I am me,” I echo, with relief.
“Yes,” he says. “And you are a goddamned force to be reckoned with.”
Chapter Ninety
Dahlia
I get the call on the way up to Eli’s apartment.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Detective Harrison here,” he says.
“Yes?” I stop by the wall in the stairwell, nervous. “I know how these things go. Attempted rape and I’ll be the one busted for having a gun.”
“I wanted to get back to you. About the texts you were getting.”
“Oh.” With relief, I start walking the stairs again. “Yes?”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem anymore.”
I can hear the smile in his voice and find myself smiling too. “Oh no? Why’s that?”
“We tracked down the phone. I figured the guy would be smart enough to use a burner, but he didn’t. So, the phone was registered to BR Funds. And the only person we could track down with a connection to the Hawk Club was BR himself.” He pauses theatrically. “Mr. Blake Roberts.”
“I’ve heard of him,” I say, playing it coy.
“Yeah, no doubt,” he says with obvious pride at his catch. “He’s some millionaire big shot in New York. But get this,” he continues, “it turns out he was just busted, for terrorism of all things.”
“Really?” I say. “That’s shocking.”
“Yeah, so anyway. The phone has been taken into custody. But…no offense, that’s small potatoes to them. They’re going after him for some pretty heavy stuff here.”
“So it seems,” I say, and start walking up the stairs again.
“Anyway, just wanted to tell you. Let your sister know too. All is good.”
“Thanks,” I say with a new bounce in my step. Because after I help out Eli with his packing, I’m going to pick up my gorgeous and wonderful Simone.
• • •
Standing in the doorway, I gaze around Eli’s destroyed apartment. It looks like somebody robbed the place.
“Hmm,” I say.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Hmm.”
“Where does one even start?” I ask.
“One doesn’t even know.” He points to some stacked boxes in the tiny foyer. “I’ve got the kitchen practically done.” He grabs a garbage bag from a roll. “I’ll start tossing away junk. You pack up some books?”
“Deal.”
I get to work on the bookcase, and Eli starts filling the crinkling bag. Most of the books are oversize paperback textbooks from college. “Mao Tse-Tung and the Gang of Four,” I read out loud. “Do you even look at this stuff anymore?”
He examines a tchotchke and tosses it. “A house should have books.”
“Yeah, but books you actually might read,” I say, stacking the box. “Doesn’t Brandon have books?”
“Not really. Just boring tech stuff.” Eli drags his bag to the corner. “Speaking of books, did you tell James about Stanford yet?”
“Not yet.”
He stops filling the bag and looks at me.
“I will. I will,” I say, fitting in one more book, then folding the box top shut. “I’m excited though. I could use a change of scene.” I close up the next box, and we work in silence for a while. The bookcase is empty except for stripes of dust, and the family room is finally taking on a similitude of order. I walk over to the little front closet and open it. “Pack up the coats?”
He glances over. “Sounds good.”
Dragging a longer, rectangular box over, I begin unhanging coats. “So, I told you about Blake Roberts, right?”
“Ten times.” He tosses a navy sweater onto a pile on the floor.
“Can you believe that he used a fucking phone from his office?”
Eli tosses some old papers into a recycling bin. “He’s probably cheap.”
“Yeah, probably.” Pushing the hangers to the side with a high-pitched squeak, I spy a set of plastic drawers in the back of the closet. “Dump all this stuff in too?”
“That’s fine,” he says, not looking.
The first of the three plastic drawers has a bunch of old ski stuff, bulky, rolled-up socks, and threadbare long johns. I toss those into the box and move on to drawer number two, filled with a jumble of old electronics and cords. I remove the whole drawer and slide it down the floor, figuring he’ll toss the whole thing. Bending over, I yank on the last drawer, which sticks on something. Finally, with one strong pull, I open it and see an old BU sweatshirt, a couple BU mugs, and a ball cap, which is still stuck between the two drawers. It takes a couple tries, but I finally pull it free.
Then, I hold it in my hand, staring at it blindly, without comprehension.
I expected a BU hat, but it’s not a BU hat. Staggering backward, I feel the room spin. A tidal wave sweeping in. The vortex swirling.
It’s not a BU hat. It’s a Red Sox baseball cap.
With a Javier Ramirez signature on the bill.
• • •
“You okay?” Eli is at my side.
“Yeah,” I say, though my mouth has turned to shoe leather. I point to the hat. “Where’d you get that?”
“This thing?” He leans down and turns it in his hands, like he’s trying to remember. “I think I won it off some kid on a bet.” There is a flicker of a twitch in his lips.
My legs feel loose, and I slip onto the arm of his sofa chair. “What kind of bet?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I was probably blotto at the time. I just remember that if he won… I don’t even remember the kid’s name, Colin something. Anyway, if he won, I had to give him my Yankee cap, and if I won, he had to give me his Red Sox one.” He looks at the bill. “It’s probably worth something. It’s signed and everything.”
“Yeah.�
� I sit on my hands, because they are shaking.
“Why, do you want it?”
I shake my head because I cannot speak.
I don’t believe him.
I don’t know why. But I don’t believe him. Maybe it was the twitch of his lips. Maybe it was all the details in the story. I can’t say why exactly, except that I know Eli better than I know myself. And I think he’s lying.
“You can see how much I cared about it. It ended up in the bottom of my closet.”
My head feels like it’s floating. “I have to go.”
He looks surprised. “Oh, okay.” Walking closer, he puts a hand on my shoulder. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Just.” I lick my lips. “I have some things to get done.”
“Sure, sure. Thanks for helping anyway. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” My voice sounds odd, not like my voice. A dead voice, a stranger’s voice. I feel as if I float out of the room, and I grip the metal railing in the stairway to pull myself back down.
It couldn’t be him. It’s impossible.
My mind churns through the possibilities. There are five hundred signed hats. Only a 0.02 percent chance it would be him. And he didn’t even go to Harvard. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that he was lying.
I barely make it to my couch, and then lie there a while, gathering my strength. I feel like I’ve been oddly stricken. I grab my phone, and feel like I barely have the strength to lift up my arms. “It can’t be,” I say out loud to no one.
Then I call James.
He listens to the whole story, then pauses. “You’re right. It’s unlikely,” he says. “But not impossible.”
We sit in ponderous silence on the phone.
“Are you sure he even went to BU?” James asks.
“I don’t know, but I think so. He’s got BU stuff everywhere. And a yearbook.”
“Could he have transferred there from Harvard?”
“I…I guess it’s possible. He wasn’t in our face book though.”
“But he would have been two years younger.”
I lie there, immobilized. I can hardly even think.
“I could try to find out,” James says. “Maybe get into their records.”
I pause over this one. I could probably go to the Registrar, but they probably wouldn’t give me the information. “Daisy,” I say, thinking of it then. “She’s on the reunion committee. She might be able to find out for us.”
Chapter Ninety-One
Dahlia
The night is endless, but somehow I get through it.
James offered to come over, but I was too unsettled and agitated for company, even his calming company. Even my Beretta was gone. But at least I had Simone back, delivered safely from Daisy’s excellent care. I finally fell asleep to her soft breathing, her fur against my head, but my sleep was light and disjointed, riddled with images of Eli wearing the Red Sox hat, laughing and laughing.
At work, I can barely sit in my seat.
“You okay?” Sylvia asks.
“Fine, why?” I busy myself by organizing a binder.
“You seem off or something.”
I force a laugh. “Too much coffee.” My phone rings, and I jump, then grab it. “Yeah?”
“He didn’t go to Harvard,” Daisy says. “No record at all. He didn’t transfer in either and wasn’t enrolled in any final clubs. Nowhere in the registrar.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Okay.”
“You don’t sound completely convinced,” she observes.
“I don’t know what I am,” I admit. “Probably just in shock.”
She lowers her voice. “You know I don’t love the guy, Dahlia. I never made that a secret. But I never said he was a rapist.”
“I know you’re right. I’m obviously going crazy with all this.”
“All right, dear,” she says in her high-pitched voice, which means she’s kindly dismissing me. “Hang in there. I got to get going.”
I throw myself into work, but I’m still edgy. Maybe because I came close to accusing my best friend of the worst thing possible. Maybe because I still have a feeling that something isn’t right. I don’t know, but my mind was still only half engaged in work, if that. Finally, I text James.
Break room?
Sure
When I get there, he’s standing by the window staring at the falling snow. His body throws a gray shadow on the wall. He joins me at a table, and when I tell him Daisy’s info, he seems relieved.
“That’s good news, right?” he asks.
“Right.” But there’s a niggling part of me that won’t settle. What did Detective Harrison say about coincidences? “I don’t know. My gut’s telling me something isn’t right.”
He nods, folding his fingers on the table.
“What’s your gut saying?” I ask.
James shrugs. “I don’t have a good gut. My brain always overrides it.”
“Huh.” So we sit in silence a few minutes as people file in and out, pouring coffee and talking about the weather. A storm coming. Maybe a nor’easter.
“He didn’t seem weird about the hat at all?” he asks when the room empties again.
“No.” My hand tattoos a rhythm on the table. “Not at all. Just more concerned at how I was acting.”
As James concentrates, he rocks back and forth just the slightest bit in his chair. “Would he have told anyone? His parents?”
“I doubt it,” I say. “They’re not really close.”
“A friend then?” he asks. “A boyfriend, maybe?”
The name hits me as soon as he says this. “Kevin.”
James slows his rocking. “Who’s Kevin?”
“This guy he used to date,” I say, my mind reeling with the memory. “I wonder if that was it,” I muse aloud. “If that’s why Kevin broke up with him.”
James gives me a quizzical look. “There are lots of reasons to break up with somebody.”
“Yeah, but this was different,” I say. “One day they were totally in love, and the next, Kevin dumped him. He left me this voicemail about how awful Eli was. Which was really bizarre… I mean, I hardly knew the guy.”
Maybe it wasn’t the cocaine talking after all. Maybe he just wanted to tell me the truth.
I think back to the Mexican restaurant, when Kevin could hardly bear to look at us. “Eli said he revealed his true self, and Kevin dumped him.” I replay the words in my head. “I just figured Eli was being dramatic. But maybe that’s what he revealed.”
Outside, the snow is falling harder, thick flakes dotting the window.
“Could you call this Kevin guy?” James asks.
“Maybe. But I don’t even know his last name. I always called him ‘the asshole with blow.’ Rutgers? Rogers? Rizzo? Something like that. With an R.” I tap my fingers, thinking. “And I can’t exactly ask Eli because he’ll definitely know what’s up.”
James turns from the window. “Didn’t you say he left a message for you before though?”
“Yeah, but that was years ago. Those messages would be long gone.”
He scrunches his eyebrows. “Perhaps. Different IOS. But it’s still worth a try.” He lays out his palm. “Want me to give it a go?”
• • •
Back at my desk, I am trying to get some work done to take my mind off Eli.
“Gonna be a bad one tonight.” Sylvia frets, glancing at the window down the hall.
“Yeah.” I am trying to focus on a scaffolding case for Tabitha but end up highlighting all the wrong stuff. My brain can hardly process words right now.
“Beau’s lucky. He’s in North Carolina. No snow there.” She pauses, then rapid typing starts up again. “He wants to move there eventually, but I don’t know… I�
�m not sure if I could do that.”
“Uh-huh.” I highlight a few more lines, then automatically reach for my phone to look at the time, when I realize James has it, and I don’t wear a watch. “What time is it?”
Sylvia gives me an odd look and checks her phone. “Three forty-four.”
“Okay, thanks.” It’s been two hours. He probably won’t be able to get the number. I could call that Mexican restaurant, but Kevin never even sat down, so they wouldn’t have the receipt. He might still be in Eli’s contacts, but that means getting a hold of his phone, which is practically surgically attached to him.
I put Tabitha’s document down just as Connor is walking by.
“Hey, guys. It’s going to get pretty bad out there if you want to leave early.”
Sylvia leans forward to observe the window. The sky is a mottled gray. “That might not be such a bad idea,” she says as he walks away. “It really is getting bad.”
For show, I look outside too. “Yeah, it is.” Sitting back in my chair, I do a quick check of my email for an update. A couple new things from work, nothing from James. With an inward groan, I force myself to read a few more unbearable paragraphs of Tabitha’s case.
Sylvia leans over to look outside yet again. “You know, I think I will head home early. Before it gets really bad.” She stands up and starts gathering her things.
“I will soon,” I say, and then see the welcome form of James walking through the doorway. I can’t read his expression right away, but he gives me a thumbs-up, and I feel a sense of relief followed by immediate panic. Now I’m going to have to call him. Now I’m going to have to find out, one way or the other.
“I fixed your phone,” James says for Sylvia’s benefit.
But she’s trussed up in her winter gear and barely notices. “See you, guys.” Sylvia gives a gloved wave and marches off. Once she leaves, James sits in her chair.
“I saved him in your contacts under Kevin Blow.”
Chuckling at this gallows humor, I open up my phone and get to his number. “Should I do it?”
“Might as well,” he says, then half stands. “Do you want me to leave or—”