by Camryn King
Poverty had a feeling . . . and a face.
“This was our block back in the day,” Christian said, pulling Mallory from her thoughts, the first article in the series being mentally rewritten with every moment she spent with the man. “My cousins stayed right there.” He pointed to a building doing a mean gangster lean, two men with red eyes and brown bags lounging on the steps. “Curtis is his son.”
“So when you said little cuz . . .”
“It wasn’t gang lingo.”
Mallory leaned against the door and stared at him. “I finally get why people worship you.”
“You don’t, but you will,” Christian said, not looking up from his cell phone screen. “Tonight. The arena. That’s when God arrives.”
A devilish smile showed that he was teasing. Later, his words almost proved to be true. Christian was a god in a religion called basketball. Mallory enjoyed being a part of the congregation. Watching Christian lead his team was nothing short of magic. The tour of Christian’s life in North Philly was a valuable eye-opener, letting Mallory finally see the man in 3-D. They hadn’t talked about Brandon, and she’d not mentioned Leigh’s name as she’d planned to gauge his reaction. But she left Philadelphia with what she considered a jackpot. She retrieved and pocketed Christian’s used water bottle. She had proof that, if it had to be used, would not lie—Christian “Don’t-Give-a-Damn” Graham’s DNA.
18
Once back in Brooklyn, Mallory headed straight to the office. She ditched the article she’d written for next week’s post and started over from scratch with what Christian had shared about himself and the vision for Christian’s Kids, the true connection he had with impoverished youth who reminded him of himself at that age. His desire to make a difference in the world. To improve lives. She scanned the notes she’d made on the plane, took a breath, and began typing.
All of Christian Graham’s children don’t live in New York.
Mallory left work at five and after getting a text from Ava headed over to midtown for dinner and drinks. The Newsroom was her favorite bar and eating hangout, but Ava wanted different, so she’d chosen a popular spot for the young professional, Bar Sixty-Five. When Mallory reached the floor for which the place had been named she spotted Ava’s curly locks in a sea of heads and headed to a window-side table.
“Haven’t been here in forever,” Mallory said, once they’d hugged and sat down. “Forgot the beauty of this view.”
“It’s one of my favorites.”
“Used to be Jack’s and my favorite place, too. When we first broke up, I couldn’t eat here.”
“I’m glad you got over that, and him. Gosh, I’m starving. What should I eat?”
After deciding on dinner and ordering drinks, Ava got down to business. “What happened?”
Mallory told her about the visit to Philadelphia, the neighborhood where Christian spent time as a child, and the building he’d purchased for the first satellite campus for Christian’s Kids.
“It started out a bit rough. Both of us defensive. But we connected over jazz and eventually I saw the side of him that draws in crowds, and I believe he’s serious about his foundation.”
“No longer think it’s just a tax write-off?”
“Any man with money benefits from a nonprofit. But I think he’s more hands on than I believed.”
“Like visiting that boy in the hospital?” Mallory nodded. “Did you find out what that was about?”
“No, but I’m working on that next week. While at the airport in Philadelphia I sent an email to Emma Davis, who runs Christian’s Kids. Told her I wanted to interview Harmony Walker and she agreed. Harmony is Brandon’s sister.”
“Oh, okay. Good luck with that. Hopefully one mystery solved.”
“Yes, and I have what’s needed to possibly solve another mystery, too. If Leigh was indeed pregnant, I can find out if he’s the father.”
“What could possibly do that besides his DNA?”
“Which is what I’ve got.”
“You slept with him?”
“No!” she said so forcibly that those around them turned.
“Don’t look so mortified! If that happened, bagging a condom would be a no-brainer.”
“It was much easier than that. He littered the town car floor with a water bottle. I decided to recycle. The bottle is wrapped and in my freezer. I have a contact in Baltimore who can run the tests.”
“Interesting that happened, because I’ve got some news, too.”
“You look serious. What?”
“Sam and I felt bad about not doing our part to get justice for Leigh. Although you two were besties, we knew her, too. So she took on the task of IDing the guy in the Manhattan high-rise, and I did a little digging around the family planning center.”
“Dr. Kapoor’s office?”
“Yes.”
“You got Leigh’s records?”
“I said dig, not pilfer. Saw a cleaning crew go into the building. When they came out I inquired about work. Said if they had an opening in the evenings, I knew someone who might need a job.”
“Who?”
“You! I don’t do windows or floors.”
Mallory’s brow furrowed, and her fingers rapped the table as she considered pulling off the role. “If the file room isn’t locked I can pull it off. This is genius, Ava. When do I start?”
“I didn’t get that far. You need to call them, and quickly.”
“Be right back.” Mallory pulled out her cell phone and headed out to the street.
* * *
The following Tuesday Mallory sat parked around the corner from New Life Medical, wearing baggy black jeans and a black tee as the employer requested. A straight brown wig with blonde highlights and bangs covered her curls, with an LED cap perched on top. Inside her pants pocket was an LED flashlight, burner phone, screwdriver, nail clipper, and a bump key, should she need to pick a lock. Mallory hoped that wouldn’t happen. A ten-minute YouTube video on how to quickly and easily open any lock wasn’t the best guarantee against a) being successful b) ending up in jail or c) both. Her cell phone was at home in Brooklyn, providing a cell-tower alibi if the need for one ever came up. Her legal ID was in the glove compartment. A fake driver’s license with a common name was in her pocket with the phone. Using the computer vision dazzle she’d researched online, makeup had been applied to reshape her nose and thin out her lips. Her big brown eyes were partially hidden behind thick round glasses that along with the carefully applied makeup would offset her angular face. With a last checkoff of the mental list she envisioned, she reached for her keys and the car door handle.
“You’re on, Knight. Come with me, Leigh. We can do this.”
While walking to the door, her nerves were so frayed she thought she’d throw up. She’d filled out the paperwork online, but the woman she’d talk to on Friday and again yesterday seemed like a hard-ass rule-follower who toed the line. But a few seconds in the presence of a distracted assistant super named Anna, in an ongoing argument with her boyfriend or whoever was on the other end of the Bluetooth, Mallory relaxed. Maybe Leigh really had sway wherever she was, because the distraction would make her job easy. After pointing out the various rooms, the super gave Mallory the task of emptying all of the trash cans and cleaning the bathrooms. Jobs obviously for the low man on the totem pole, she reasoned, but if the file room had a trash can her job, the main one she’d entered the building to handle, would get done.
Mallory cleaned the bathrooms first, taking the time to calm down and go over the plan in her head. How to comb through the files quickly. Praying that the files contained actual patient records. With so many hospitals going digital, that might not be the case. What to do if the cabinets were locked. What to say if she got caught. She put on latex gloves and then, grabbing a circular trash can on wheels, Mallory started in the reception area, dumping the contents of smaller trash cans into the round receptacle. She kept her head down, remembering that she’d seen a camera in the waiti
ng room. It made sense that at least one was outside by the entrance and that one would be in the file room, too. Now and then the super could be heard either laughing or cursing, but with Mallory’s limited Spanglish it was really anyone’s guess. The other woman working with Anna and her ran a vacuum, making meticulous lines on the carpeted floors. Mallory hoped the whirring sound would cover up any noise she’d have to make if the file cabinets were locked.
She reached the main hallway. There were four doors, all closed. Even with the mental preparation, her heartbeat increased as her hand touched the knob on the first door on the left. She turned the knob slightly. Easy. Unlocked. She entered an administrative office with two desks facing each other. Within the seconds it took to empty the trash cans her investigative eye took in pictures of a family on one desk and those of girlfriends and dogs on the other. A married woman and single chick. She believed given five minutes she could have written their lives.
She quickly checked the next room and emptied the trash, but when she turned the knob to the third door, it was locked. Her mind wobbled with one question after another. Should she find the super and ask what was behind door number three? Try and pick the lock? Check the other rooms first and then come back? She looked at her watch. She tried the final door in the hallway. It was locked, too. Crap! One she figured belonged to the doctor. But which one? And how much time and luck did she have to find out? They were to be finished in an hour. With refocused intention, she turned the corner that led to another short hall and the examination rooms that Mallory remembered from her prior visit. There were two more rooms down this hall, a supply room and a kitchen with a table for breaks. Taking a deep breath, she returned to the short hallway, and after listening for the vacuum’s location and taking a quick look around, she pulled out the set of bump keys. She wasn’t big on religion, but she prayed anyway. Please, work quickly. Please be the file room. Her hands shook as she reached for the one resembling most office keys and slid it into the chamber. No go. She quickly reached for a similar one and tried it. Bingo! Holding the key with her right hand and turning it slightly, she tapped with her left, working quickly and a bit too efficiently for someone’s first time. A burglar in another life, perhaps?
Come on!
Click.
Without hesitation Mallory pushed open the door and walked right into . . . Dr. Kapoor’s office.
Shit!
She headed toward the basket beneath the desk and then remembered she wasn’t supposed to be in there. After a quick check of the hallway she closed the door, checked the knob to make sure it was locked, and then pushed the large trash container beyond the other locked door to the hallway leading to the bathroom. She still held the key that had worked on Dr. Kapoor’s door and quickly slid it into the chamber and began tapping and twisting. She’d hammered twice, maybe three times before realizing what was wrong with the picture. She could hear the sound way too loudly.
The vacuum cleaner had stopped.
Where was the other cleaning lady?
Right behind you, Paranoia answered in her head.
Get the fuck out! Fear screamed.
And then another voice, this one a calm whisper. Go on. Hurry.
Mallory tapped twice more, as quietly as she could. The lock turned. She slipped inside, her heart beating louder than the sound of the screwdriver tapping the key. She leaned back against the door, took a couple seconds to quell her heart’s pounding. It would have worked except the vacuum cleaner started up again.
Right behind her. Right outside the door.
Did the cleaning crew have a key to the file room? More importantly, would they be using it anytime soon? Like while I’m in here trying to steal shit?
The thought spurred Mallory to action. She turned on the baseball cap’s LED lights, which according to the internet description would make her head disappear behind a ball of white light. The lights definitely lit up the room, so much so that she didn’t need the mini flashlight to navigate it. There was a row of vertical filing cabinets against the back wall. A large, horizontal one was on the right wall along with a rolling cabinet. Shelving covered the other wall above a rectangular table containing file folders and other supplies. She walked to the tall cabinets at the back of the room and pulled on the first drawer. It was locked. A good sign for Mallory. Probably contained patient files. She retrieved the nail clipper from her pocket, pulled out the file part of it, and hoped the lock on these files was as easy to pick as hers had been the night before.
It was. One push, one turn. Click.
She eased open the file drawer, reached toward the middle, and pulled out one file at random.
Bates.
She moved to the last drawer in the cabinet. It contained a different set of folders altogether. Gray instead of manila. What does that mean? Pulling out her mini flashlight she knelt down and thumbed through the first couple files. She ran into names beginning with A. She opened the file and scanned the first page’s contents. Children’s files? Not what she needed. She quickly moved to the second cabinet. The lock was more challenging than the first but opened after ten seconds of jimmying it with the file.
How long have I been in here? Mallory didn’t know but something told her, Hurry.
She reached inside the first drawer. Franklin.
She scanned its contents. An adult. Female. Pregnant. Closer.
Closer. She reached into the back of the drawer. Izsak.
Oh. My. God.
She closed the first drawer and opened the second one. She pulled out a folder near the front. Jaber. Mallory screamed on the inside. Yes! With urgency she raced through the folders. Then a thought paralyzed her.
What if Leigh had used a fake name?
Mallory searched even more frantically. Jaccard. Jace. And finally, Jackson.
There were a lot of them.
She focused on the first names, looking for L. Lacy. Lisa. Lillian. Lori. And others. No Leigh.
“Grace!”
Mallory flipped through the L’s again, focused on each name. The one she wanted to see wasn’t there.
“Grace!”
Mallory heard the name, and her heart stopped beating. Anna was calling her! She couldn’t respond. She couldn’t leave now, so close to the truth. She’d stay there all night if she had to, deal with the consequences in the morning. She looked for a place to hide, slid closer to the rectangular table and gripped it while checking out the space beneath and what could be used to conceal her. Crouched on the floor, her hand came in contact with something dangling off the table. She snatched her hand away, pulling it with her. She stashed it in her pocket and crept back to the files.
“Grace! Where are you?”
The other cleaning woman. The quiet one. Yelling.
“Think, Mallory!” she hissed to herself between gritted teeth.
Elizabeth.
From out of nowhere came Leigh’s middle name. Mallory flipped back to the E’s. L. Elizabeth Jackson. DOB: 07/31/ 1984. Height: 5’7”. Weight: 125. Hair: Black. Eyes: Brown. She’d found it. The file of her friend, Leigh Elizabeth Jackson.
Swallowing a wave of emotion and another of fear, Mallory whipped out the burner phone and began snapping photos. She took several angles of the file—entire pages and the blocks contained in them. No time to read. She just snapped and hoped that the truth was somewhere in the photographs.
Voices came near the door. Mallory snapped off the flashlight and turned the LED cap away from the door.
“Where is she?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know. Her trash can is by the bathroom, but she isn’t in there.”
Nothing on Mallory moved, not even her breath. The conversation continued down the hall. The file was a small one. Mallory captured everything in it on the phone, then checked to make sure the images were there and that they were timestamped. Satisfied that she’d gotten as much as she could, she replaced the file and closed the drawer. There was no time to try and lock it with the file. She placed th
e nail file, flashlight, and phone in her pockets and felt what she’d pushed down seconds before, what had swiped across her hand when by the table. Instinctively, she put it on, tiptoed to the door, and pressed her ear against it.
Silence.
Taking a deep breath, she cracked the door, then eased it open. She slid out from behind it, closed the door. She took a tentative step, and then another, headed toward where she’d left the trash container.
“Grace!”
Her whole body seized up for at least two seconds. She turned, slowly pulling an earbud from beneath the wig’s long, straight hair.
Holding the earbud as evidence, she said, “I’m sorry. I guess my music was turned up too loud.”
“Where were you?”
“I was . . .” Mallory swung her arm in a general direction. “Cleaning. Like you told me.”
“Where? You weren’t in this office when I checked a few minutes ago. And the bathrooms still aren’t clean.”
“I did go outside to take a call in private. But just for a second.” The lie wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
Anna’s eyes narrowed as her hand found a hip. “You know what? I don’t think this is going to work out for us. We have a lot of offices to clean, and the last thing I need to spend my time doing is going behind somebody who doesn’t want to work. Consider this first day your last one”
“I’m sorry.” Mallory had to work to keep the smile off her face and the joy out of her tone. Getting fired was the best thing that could have happened right now. It saved her from another lie later.
“Do you want me to leave right now?”
“Yes. Right now. And don’t expect to get paid for the whole shift when you only worked an hour.”
“But, Anna, I—”