by Moxie Mezcal
"Really?" McPherson responded, shaking his head. "Well, my daughter does like to tell stories, so it wouldn't surprise me if that little detail is one of her embellishments."
"That's true, she does like to tell stories," I said and shot the entire glass of brandy he had set in front of me. "I guess I'll just have to ask Anthony about it, since that's who blue car man drove you to meet."
Again, no reaction – not even a twitch.
"You know, you really should sip a liquor this fine," he admonished.
I burst into laughter, which caused him to arch an eyebrow quizzically.
"Sorry," I apologized. "But do you ever feel like you're life is one of those old cartoons where you keep running in a straight line, but the same scenery keeps cycling back around every couple frames?"
"I'm not sure I follow."
I shrugged my shoulders, then looked down at a row of framed photos on the desk. They were all of Columbine, each one showing her at a different age.
I picked up the furthest one from me, which showed her as an infant sitting in the lap of a woman. The picture had been cropped to focus on the child, so most of the woman was out of frame. Only her hands and chest were visible.
"Nice picture," I said. "Who's that holding her?"
"Her mother," he replied.
"I thought her mother died during labor."
"No." McPherson shook his head and frowned. "She died when Natalie was still very young, though. Shortly after this picture was taken, in fact. Why'd you think she died during childbirth?"
"That's what she told me. But as you said, she likes to embellish her stories," I explained. "Why'd you cut her mom out of the picture?"
He sucked his teeth distastefully. "Her mother and I were never married. Things didn't end on good terms between us."
"What does that mean?"
McPherson didn't respond. I shifted restlessly in my chair, my patience wearing thin, and finally blurted out, "Okay, fine, let's stop pussyfooting around this thing. Let me ask you this – why have you been calling Lily Lynch so much lately? What's the story there?"
McPherson furrowed his brow pensively and pushed the tips of his fingers together, forming his hands into an A. "Lynch – wait, are you talking about Natalie's friend, that unpleasant little woman who works for Max? I don't remember speaking with her lately, and I can't imagine why I should have."
The way he kept playing dumb was starting to grate on my nerves. I decided to provoke him a little. Leaning in over the table conspiratorially, I gave him a knowing wink and asked, "You were fucking her, weren't you?"
His cheeks immediately glowed bright pink. "Excuse me."
I put up my hands as if to say I meant no harm. "I can't say I blame you. I've imagined what she was like between the sheets myself once or twice. I bet she likes it rough, doesn't she? Pulling her hair, holding her down, maybe slapping her around a bit. I can tell her type – just like I can tell yours. But hey, takes two to know, right, and who doesn't like a little of the rough stuff?"
He stood up and lunged toward me menacingly, slamming his palms down on the desktop, his face flush with rage. "Listen, I don't know what kind of stories my daughter has been telling you about me, but I am not some kind of monster – despite whatever she might believe I did or didn't do to her."
At first I stared at him blankly in confusion, but then something clicked in my head, and Columbine's animosity towards her father made a lot more sense.
Then I hit him.
I hit the bastard hard, and then I hit him again.
And it felt good.
McPherson spat a couple wads of blood and teeth onto the slick finish of his desktop.
On my way out of the house, I found Jenny and Brad waiting in the drawing room.
"What's wrong?" Jenny asked as she stood up to meet me.
"I just accused your new father-in-law of colluding with blackmailers and murderers. Then I knocked a couple of teeth out for molesting his daughter."
"You what?" Brad yelled.
"Brad, Jesus, just mind your own fucking business, you cunt," I snarled as I headed for the door.
Jenny grabbed my arm. "D, wait."
I shrugged her off. "Jenny, I'm not really in the mood for a lecture now, so save it."
She looked at me with hurt in her eyes. "Why are you so intent on driving away the few people left who actually care about you?"
"You know, this is the second time this week someone has asked me that. I still don't have a good answer."
* * *
27. Would It Have Made a Difference?
I pounded my fist against the steering wheel in frustration as I sped down the hill, twisting along the narrow mountain road, not really sure where I was heading.
I switched the radio onto the local junior college station. The music was strange and ethereal. A woman sang surreal stream-of-consciousness lyrics over a single acoustic guitar plucking repetitive arpeggios with typewriter sounds in the background. It was hypnotic and unsettling at the same time. I could feel the hairs standing up on my arms.
A magic for the chosen few
Confused as well as clarified
Unknown, a pixel in your TV screen
Give me truth and I'll show you how you lie
Give me lies and I will know yourself
A phone started ringing, but when I picked up mine I realized it was the wrong one. I opened the glove box to grab Lily's phone and looked down at the caller ID display, which read: HOME.
I clicked the green button to answer.
"I wonder if I ever even had a chance of being happy. Like if I had made different choices, if I hadn't fucked things up so bad, would it have made a difference? I wonder if there's some other world out there, some alternate universe where I ended up happy."
"Who is this?" I asked, even though the voice was unmistakably Lily's.
"Meet me at my place in an hour. I need to talk to you."
The line went dead.
Suddenly, a pair of headlights flashed in my rearview, and I glanced up to see them bearing down on me fast. At first the car was obscured in the darkness, but as it came closer, I recognized it as the blue Chevy. Fucking bastard McPherson sicked his dog on me.
I felt it tap my back bumper. The car was now close enough that I could make out the driver's scarred, ruddy face in the rearview – it was the man who attacked me in Max's plane, the same one who drove McPherson out to meet Anthony at the graves.
I sped up, but the Del Rey kept pace and tapped me two more times.
He pulled up beside me on the left and started drifting right, trying to force me off the road. The two cars scraped together as I tried to accelerate, but I couldn't shake him. I was sure the Porsche could take him, but I didn't want to risk opening it up to full speed at night on such a winding road.
We came up on a sharp left turn, and I knew right away that I was going too fast and he had pushed me too far over. I took the turn wide and my right tires left the pavement. The wheel jerked out of my hands as the Porsche veered off down the embankment and crashed headfirst into a tree.
I heard the Del Rey continue on down the mountain, its sound getting faint in the distance.
The airbag had deployed and saved me from any real harm, but I was still sore from the impact and covered in shattered glass. I staggered out of the Porsche, which was totaled, and sat down on the dirty ground, feeling twigs and dead leaves crackling underneath me.
When I had finally regained my bearings, I called Columbine on my cell phone and explained what happened. "Can you get your hands on a car and pick me up?"
"I'm kind of tied up at the moment. Can you wait?"
"No. I don't have time to explain now, but I have somewhere to be. Do you think you could send someone to pick me up?"
"How about Violet?" Columbine offered.
I hesitated but decided I really didn't have a choice. "Okay."
---
Violet pulled up twenty minutes later. "Rough night?"
"Hardy-har," I replied as I climbed into her Volvo.
She flashed her toothy smile at me. God, I melted whenever I saw that smile. "So where are we headed?"
"Lily's."
I instructed her to take an overly-complicated route, sticking to back streets and going around in circles a few times to make sure we weren't being followed. By the time we finally arrived, it was just a hair past the hour-mark from when Lily originally called me.
As we turned the corner onto Lily's block, we found the blue Del Rey parked in front of her building. I told Violet to keep going past it and park a couple blocks away. Then I doubled back on foot, being careful to stay as hidden as possible.
I was crouched behind the hedges of the building next door when I saw the blue car's driver emerge from Lily's front gate, wearing a long trench coat and hat just like before. I stayed down until he pulled away, then ran into the building.
When I reached Lily's condo, the door was ajar. I went inside and switched the lights on, finding it empty. Everything was still the way I remembered it – meaning thoroughly trashed. Deciding to wait, I sat down on the couch.
Ten minutes later, the door opened, and Lily walked in. She looked like a bum; her skin and clothes were covered with dirt, her hair tangled and matted. She wore a stained white tank top and dirty torn jeans. Her feet were bare, raw, and bleeding.
"Jesus Christ, what happened to you?"
She smirked and pointed at my face. "I was just about to ask you the same thing."
"Hey, be nice, I'm sensitive about my new look."
"You shouldn't be, it's no more hideous than your old one."
It was good to see she hadn't lost her touch.
"So you really were hiding out in the shantytown?" I asked.
"Yes, I figured it was the last place anyone would think to look for me. Until of course you showed up."
She walked over to the tattered remains of her couch, fixed a couple of cushions on it as well as she could, and sank down into it, savoring what probably was still the most comfortable seat she'd had all week.
"So what did you need to see me about?" I asked.
"Why haven't you done anything with the parcel that Cobb gave you?"
"I can't open the box. He told me the Ariadne Key would open it, but I still haven't been able to find it."
Lily sighed and shook her head. "You really don't know as much about what's going on as you lead others to believe." I looked at her blankly. "You've been carrying it around with you for the past several days. The key is in my phone."
I pulled out her BlackBerry. "Inside this?"
She snatched it away from me. Then she popped open the back panel and removed the micro-SD card.
"How is that supposed to open the box?"
"It doesn't. It's a trick box. You press in on both ends at once and the drawer slides out. The Ariadne Key unlocks the data inside."
"A cryptographic key," I said as I took the card from her, thinking that I probably should have figured that out a lot earlier. "So what now?"
"Now we go get the parcel, and I'll show you what you've been sitting on all week. We'll send it to all the newspapers, to the police and the mayor. Once the information is out, they can't use it to blackmail Max anymore, and Max won't be able to hurt me."
"Just like that, you're turning against your conspirators?" I asked.
"That's the only way I'll ever be safe," she responded.
"Okay, but first you'll have to get yourself cleaned up. The place where I have it hidden is a classy establishment," I said.
"You won't get any argument from me," she replied. "A nice warm shower sounds just like heaven right now."
Lily disappeared into the bathroom, and soon after I heard the shower start. This left me alone to think about what she had just told me. It was possible that she was telling the truth, but on the other hand, it was equally possible that she was playing me to get her hands on Cobb's box and turn it over to the blackmailers.
It stood to reason, at least in my mind, that if she was telling the truth, it didn't matter if she came with me or not; as long as I went public with whatever data was in that box, the outcome would be the same either way. She only had to come along if she was planning on double-crossing me.
It made sense at the time, but considering what happened later, I never got to find out which was really the case. Looking back, however, I replayed that same line of reasoning over and over in my head, but it never did much to keep me from wondering if things would have turned out differently that night if I had trusted her.
But anyways, I made up my mind to slip quietly out of the condo while Lily showered and went back to Violet's car alone.
"How did it go?" she greeted me.
"Well, I could use a drink," I replied. "You're not in any rush to get home, are you?"
* * *
28. Dispenser
I was worried that the man in the blue car might have somehow followed us after leaving Lily's, so I decided to kill a couple hours at the Casbah with Violet before getting down to business. We traded shots, took over the jukebox, and danced like a couple of spastic monkeys. I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed myself so much.
Finally, I decided I'd waited long enough to proceed without arousing the suspicions of anyone who might be watching.
Violet was in the middle of a heated – if slurred – debate with the bartender Maggie about the relative merits of Steinem vs. Paglia or some shit like that when I abruptly announced, "I gotta hit the head. Hey Mags, did they get around to fixing that condom machine yet?"
The two women simultaneously whipped their heads around to look at me in disbelief. "Oh I don't think you'll need to worry about it tonight, dear," Maggie replied.
I staggered back to the restroom, laughing all the way. After relieving myself into the porcelain trough, I walked over to the condom dispenser and pried open its face.
Cobb's blue box was hidden in the change repository. Holding it carefully, I pushed in on each end. One side sprang back out, revealing a small drawer containing a USB flash drive. I stuffed it into my pocket with Lily's memory card, then replaced the box in the condom machine and closed it all back up just as it had been.
When I returned, Violet had already gathered up her coat and purse and was leaning unsteadily against the bar.
"Are you ready to leave?" I asked. "I don't think you're in any condition to drive."
"You can drive, then--," she said, then added playfully, "--to your place. Did you get the machine to work?"
"No."
"Pity," she replied, then grabbed me by the neck of my shirt and pulled me in to give me a sloppy, passionate kiss.
---
Ten minutes later, I was pressed up against my front door, reaching blindly behind myself with my keys in one hand, trying to find the keyhole as Violet wrapped her legs around me and kissed me hungrily. I finally managed to get the door open, then staggered backwards into the room. I carried her over to the kitchen counter while she sucked on my earlobe, not missing a beat. Then, as I set her down, I unzipped her skirt and worked off her panties while kissing down her neck. Dropping to my knees, I lifted her left leg and licked my tongue along the leather of her knee-high Docs until I hit the smooth, creamy flesh of her legs. I planted a series of kisses and bites along the skin of her inner thigh, working my way up, enjoying the way my lips felt against her burn scars. Finally, I reached her pussy and propped her leg up on my shoulders as she leaned back and spread herself open.
I lightly teased her vulva with my tongue for a while before moving on to firm, rapid licks, gliding my tongue between her lips, tasting her juices and savoring her scent. At first I felt her hands running through my hair and the gentle rocking of her pelvis as her body responded to me, and she let out some quiet, breathy gasps. Soon, however, I noticed she stopped responding.
I lifted my head to find her slumped against a cabinet, passed out cold. It didn't do a whole lot for my ego.
<
br /> I carried her into the bedroom and tucked her into my bed, then returned to the front room.
Settling in at my desk, I loaded both the USB drive and the memory card into my laptop and successfully opened the contents of the drive, which was a folder labeled "Project Ariadne" containing a number of different files.
It took me a solid four hours to pour through them. In a nutshell, they detailed a vast smuggling operation that Max had been tapped into ever since his return stateside.
Records of financial transactions with foreign governments, Russian and Japanese mobs, and a whole host of other unsavory characters. Detailed logs of shipments Max brought in through the port in unmarked containers with forged customs seals, including dates, times, ship info, and even what was in the cargo. Most of the shipments were drugs. The rest were split pretty evenly between weapons and women, the latter coming from Asia, Latin America, and Easter Europe. All told, he averaged about a dozen shipments a year, each one painstakingly detailed and documented in the file.
How could he keep records like this? I thought to myself. Did he really believe they'd never be found?
Shaking my head, but with a huge grin on my face, I logged onto the dashboard for the Concrete Underground website. After a little digging, I found the blog Sharon had set up for me about a year ago, but I had never done anything with. I created a post titled "The Last Will & Testament of Patrick Cobb" and began uploading the thumb drive's files as attachments.
While I waited for them to transfer, I glanced back through the documents a second time, and something new caught my attention. Of all the shipments listed, there was only one that didn't give a description of the cargo. It was one one of the earliest, sent from Dubai. I went through the rest of the files; there were a few other documents that referenced that shipment, but none said what was in it. Instead, they were all related to the construction of a special underground storage unit at Asterion, designated 33.
My computer sounded a loud alert to tell me the upload was complete. Then I zipped the files and e-mailed them to everyone I could think of – the Morning Star, the major tech bloggers, the Smoking Gun, every left wing web site in my bookmarks, all the local TV stations, 24-hour cable news, the mayor, the Governor, the freaking White House. And of course a copy went to Max.