by Joshua Corin
“It’s policy,” the receptionist replied, and he shuttered the partition.
Ross pounded against the partition with both fists, and then stopped. Stared at his closed, clenched hands. To have committed such violence against Walker Berno had been taxing enough for his conscience but to then see it in third person, out-of-body…to see the primal ferocity with which he’d taken a club to another human being…
Ross stepped away from the partition. He was going to vomit again. Oh God, he was going to…
No. He was OK.
He sat down. His temples throbbed. He needed water. He needed…he needed…
He needed a time machine. That was what he needed. He could go back and not invade Walker Berno’s home. Better yet—he could go back and never speak to Jessabelle. Yes. He would pass her in Piedmont Park and not say a word and if she tried to engage him, he would simply walk away. Good. Walk away. Easy. With Jessabelle removed from his life, Walker Berno never gets attacked and a video of that attack—because of course they would make a video, the bastards—but there would be no video to send to his co-workers and scare them out of their wits and have them wondering if they needed to call the police had he not spoken with Jessabelle in Piedmont Park. Ross had assured Michaela and Danesh and Valentina that the video was a fake, a prank, and had assured them that he would take care of it, but had they believed him? They must have, right? How believable was it that Ross Berman would have taken a bat to someone, anyone? Not kind, generous Ross Berman.
They did think he was kind and generous, didn’t they?
Oh, and one more avoided catastrophe if he never met Jessabelle: Phillip would still be alive.
Can’t forget that. Never forget that.
This was all her fault. And she had the temerity to threaten him at his place of business? The devil doesn’t get to throw stones.
Ross sat and waited. He waited for two minutes. He waited for seven minutes. He gazed over at the clipboard. Christ, were they really going to make him wait until he filled out the form? After all this? Really?
He picked up the clipboard from its resting place beside the fern and he filled it out. He was tempted to insert nonsense words and lies in each of the blanks, but he didn’t. There already was enough antagonism at play. He was here to make it all stop.
As Ross was halfway finished with the questionnaire portion of the form, a peculiar thought popped into his mind: Were they watching him right now? Voyeurism did seem to be well within their wheelhouse. Ross scanned the walls and ceilings for camera lenses. There were four panels of fluorescent lighting in the ceiling. Could a camera be hidden among them? He also counted two sprinklers. Why two? Wasn’t one enough? Was the other sprinkler a dummy so as to conceal surveillance equipment?
And then there was the fern in its fat ceramic pot. How easy would it be to hide a camera among those fronds? Maybe he had dislodged the camera when he’d struck it with the clipboard! He went to his knees and searched the carpet with his hands.
This was how Jessabelle, upon opening the door, found him: on his knees, searching for a nonexistent piece of spyware.
“Lost a contact lens?” she inquired.
He froze—and then slowly rose—and then finally turned to face her.
“You sent my co-workers a video?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m—what? I’m telling you. You sent my co-workers a video.”
“And you came all the way here—on your hands and knees—to tell me something I already know? That doesn’t sound like a fruitful way to spend your time. The weather’s nice. Have you tried a jog in the park?”
Ross took a threatening step toward her. “Why did you do it? Huh? Are you trying to get me arrested?”
“Well, you are already on the radar of the police…but why don’t we discuss this elsewhere?”
“You mean it would be bad for business if people found out that you’re guilty of, let’s see, breaking and entering and blackmail and, oh, right, murder?”
“Are you through?” Jessabelle crossed her arms. “Can we be adults?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
She opened the door that led to the rest of the office. “Let’s discuss this elsewhere.”
“Wait. No.” Ross thought again about the surveillance. He had underestimated these people for the last time. “Someplace public.”
Which was how they ended up at Starbucks—their Starbucks, the one at the tail end of Piedmont Park, where all roads in their relationship led.
Jessabelle bought herself a croissant to go with her coffee.
“I forgot to have breakfast,” she muttered.
“I don’t know how I could possibly care less,” he explained.
Their table was occupied by a hipster and his bulky typewriter, so Ross and Jessabelle instead found themselves at the SRO counter. From here, they could gaze out at the happy civilians going about their lives as midday approached the hilly fields of grass and the pinewood copses. The sun met all.
“I didn’t call the police,” said Ross, by way of starting. “They just showed up.”
“OK.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“And I’m telling you: OK.”
“Then why the hell did you send that USB drive?”
The volume and intensity of his anger caught a few glances.
“Indoor voices, please.” Jessabelle took a nibble of her croissant. “But to answer your question—oh, this croissant is so bad for me—if you’ll recall, Wednesday afternoon, you threatened me. We at the Serendipity Group are nothing if not fair.”
“You know what I did when I got home the other day? I lay down on my couch and waited for you to show up with an assassin. And it would have been…almost…justified. But to involve my co-workers—”
“An assassin? Really? Ross, we’re not monsters. Where does one even find an assassin? Is there a website?”
“Well, how did you find me?”
“Hmm?”
Ross took a shuddery breath. What better time to get an answer for one of the most dormant mysteries of this whole fiasco than now, right? Despite her protestations to the contrary, he still fully expected further, final retribution from the fair Serendipity Group for his betrayal. At least he would die knowing the truth.
And so:
“Why me? Why did you choose me? How did you choose me? How did you know I’d be a good candidate for your…whatever it is you do. Your revenge cycle.”
“Revenge gets such a bad rap. I blame Shakespeare. All those great tragic heroes, bent on revenge and dying in their tights. Revenge, in moderation, is necessary. Whoever said that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind never had someone cut him off in traffic. If I punched you in the face and you pressed charges, what would happen? I’d be punished. And that’s as it should be! It’s when people don’t get punished that things get out of whack.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“We found you the same way we find anyone. We sift through stories in search of certain criteria. Has an unjustifiable wrong been committed? Justifiable wrongs are tricky. We stay away from those. We like to operate in the binary. There are actions that are unequivocally bad. Such as a news story where a child has a chair pulled out from underneath him and ends up breaking his coccyx.”
A woman with a baby entered the café. The baby wore a pink onesie and a pink hat and was so peacefully asleep that her chest barely rose and fell against her mother’s shoulder. The woman walked with a forced bounce in her step, to keep her child at peace.
The least we do for those we love, Ross thought.
“Everything I told you,” he said, quietly, to Jessabelle, “you already knew? I was pouring out my heart…and you already knew.”
“Well, let me ask you this. Were you pouring out your heart to inform me of something or to make me feel something? Because I did feel sympathy for you. It’s why I agreed to be your liaison. What happened to you i
n school—the name-calling, the thing with the chair—it makes me ache just to think about it. You did not deserve what happened to you, and so Walker Berno deserved what happened to him. But it’s time for us to tie up loose ends, because it seems as if Walker Berno is now the one out for revenge.”
Chapter 33
“It’s funny,” said Jessabelle, finishing off her croissant, “the questions we choose not to ask. After you did what you did to Walker Berno and left that dump of a house, do you remember what I said to you? You probably don’t. You were vibrating like a tuning fork. We got into my car and I said to you—”
“ ‘It’s over now. We will make sure there is no repercussion, not from him, not from anyone,’ ” Ross quoted. “ ‘Now you can rest.’ ”
“Yeah. Well…it turns out that may not be the case.”
She tossed her napkin and coffee cup into the trash.
“I assumed you had safeguards,” said Ross, following her outside into the sun.
“We did. We do. It all comes from our vetting process. Just as you were vetted before we approached you, before I approached you, so too do we vet your counterparts. Most of our employees, actually, are researchers. How long do you think it takes us to vet a person before we can sign off on them?”
“I have no idea.”
“Six months.”
They reached the walkway. They followed it north. Just like old times, except in reverse.
“The same goes for whenever a client hires us to make a connection. Unless time’s a factor. But the vetting process is the foundation of our success. Bad intelligence would bungle it all. When it comes time for a connection to occur, we should be able to, with near certainty, predict the outcome. Because research isn’t only about where someone is born. Much of it is psychological or behavioral.”
“Plus you cheat. Don’t forget that.”
“We cheat? How?”
“The surveillance cameras. I assume you install them, what, during month three of your prep? Month four? Where did you hide the cameras in my apartment? Above the refrigerator? Inside my microwave?”
Jessabelle avoided answering by sitting down on a nearby bench.
After a pique of frustration, Ross joined her. If she wasn’t going to tell, she wasn’t going to tell. He knew enough at least to know that. He also knew enough to scour his apartment tonight for those cameras. Probably even had one in his bedroom. All the same to them. Unscrupulous bastards.
“After you left Walker Berno lying there in his own blood and piss and vomit, after we drove away, our B-team showed up. They were already there, actually, waiting in a car. They came in and fixed Walker up, cleaned up the scene…well, cleaned it up of the blood and the piss and the vomit, at least. I doubt they actually cleaned his house. They’re not miracle workers.”
“And then they made their threats? Don’t track me down or else? Don’t go to the police or else?”
“A bit more tailored, but essentially, yes.” Jessabelle leaned back and let the sun warm her face. “And because we’ve done our research, we know just which buttons to push to get them to comply.”
“Which buttons were you going to use on Phillip?”
“It hardly matters now.”
“His wife—his widow—called me this morning. I was on my way to work. She called me. She’d obviously been crying. She asked me why the coroner hadn’t released Phillip’s body yet. All she wants is to have him shipped home, but the coroner hasn’t released his body yet. And I had no idea.”
“Why was she calling you? Why not call the police?”
“The police are strangers. I’m…what I’m saying is that I’d been so caught up in my own shit that I hadn’t even thought about Phillip’s body. What leverage did you have to keep him from dispensing retribution? Because last I heard, he was going to have his hands lopped off. How exactly do you keep a thing like that under wraps?”
Jessabelle replied, “It was going to be a car accident.”
“Are you serious?”
“We had it covered. We had every t crossed and every i dotted. We are meticulous. But we hadn’t considered your interference. That was our first mistake. And then we hadn’t considered there might be a third party out there, lingering, ready to get at us the moment we were vulnerable. The moment you made us vulnerable. We especially hadn’t considered that we’d be exploited the same way by two separate parties. Or, I suppose, just how pissed off some of our former targets might still be.”
“You hadn’t considered they’d be upset? I beat Walker Berno nearly to death with his own bat!”
“Again, there’s no need to tell me what I already know.”
“So who is it? Walker Berno and who else? Who else do I need to be on the lookout for?”
“There’s no guarantee they’ll be coming after you.”
“I beat him nearly to death with his own bat!”
“I don’t understand. Does it make it worse that it was his own bat?”
Ross got up. He’d had enough. He started back down the path, back toward the Starbucks and the parking lot beyond it and to his car, because of course they’d come in separate cars. There was no way he’d be locked in a vehicle ever again with this lunatic temptress, this Siren from hell.
Then he halted. He frowned. He turned back toward Jessabelle, who remained on the bench.
He approached her until he was so close that his shadow darkened her eyes.
“ ‘Exploited the same way’?” he asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you exploited us and then they exploited us—to be honest, we aren’t sure of the order—and it was the exact same tactic, and it was the exact same result. You hacked us and they hacked us. And that got me to thinking, Ross. What if it was the same hacker?”
“What? That’s impossible.”
“It’s actually not. You refused to reveal the identity of your friend. And it should have occurred to you that the reason we weren’t able to identify the identity of your friend is because we’d stopped surveilling you. We stopped a week after you had your successful connection with Walker Berno. Feel free to check your apartment. Check anywhere you like. But it occurred to me, Ross, that you don’t have many friends. In fact, the only lasting relationships you have are with people you’ve known all your life. So let’s say this hacker you employed is an acquaintance from childhood—”
“No, I see where you’re going with this, and you’re wrong. The guy who helped me out…maybe he’s an acquaintance from childhood, maybe he isn’t, but he and Walker Berno would have traveled in very different circles.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Ross was certain…and then he was mostly certain…and then he wasn’t certain at all.
“There’s one way to find out,” continued Jessabelle. “Ask him. Call him up. Or pay him a visit. Do whatever you need to do, but do it quick, because if he is working with them, he might be able to provide us with everything we need to stop them. Or you could take your chances with the police, although I should warn you—one of them is a cop.”
“You targeted a cop? What is wrong with you people?”
“That connection was as justified as yours with Walker Berno. I assure you.”
“Just like you were sure that this cop and Walker wouldn’t try to get revenge themselves?”
Jessabelle shrugged. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“And these people, they’re the ones who kidnapped the witnesses from the hotel?”
“Yes. Kidnapped them all the way to France, if you can believe it. Just so we couldn’t use them to help clean things up over here. Fortunately, we figured it out in time to deal with the situation over there.”
“How? Did you have them killed?”
“No! For the last time, we’re the good guys!”
“Wow. You really don’t see how any of this is your fault, do you?”
“Our fault? Excuse me, but we perform a valuable service. When you serve soup to someone who just c
rawled in off the street and the person is so hungry that they eat too quickly and they choke, whose fault is that? We gave you a rare gift. Something sought after by just about everybody and achieved by just about no one. We gave you closure. And on your terms. You could have shaken hands with Walker Berno and walked away. Instead, you picked up that bat. Is it our fault his pelvis was shattered in fourteen places? How many times before that day had you fantasized about getting back at him? At exacting revenge? We gave you exactly what you wanted and what did we ask for in return? Nothing. But now these people are threatening to undermine me and you and dozens of other people whose greatest sin is that they turned the tables on those who victimized them. There’s one thing about revenge that I agree with all those tragic writers about. It can become a vicious never-ending cycle. But you can help stop it.”
Ross thought for a moment. What she said made a lot of sense. That alone unnerved him.
“What if you’re wrong? What if the guy I know isn’t the same guy that they used?”
“Then maybe he can help find out who they used. Either way, you need to ask him yourself. But if he is playing both sides, that means he’s dangerous, and if he’s dangerous, you shouldn’t go alone.”
Ross considered his options. It didn’t take him long to do so. He had so few left.
On the way back to the parking lot, he told her to follow him. He didn’t give her the address. He didn’t give her the name of the man they were going to meet. But he also didn’t text his friend a heads-up that he was about to receive a midday visitation.
Chapter 34
The city did its level best to dazzle the honeymooners—Left Bank cafés scenting sidewalks with coffee and cheese, medieval cathedrals looming gray beauty by the brick, a string quartet sounding Gounod at the end of a cobblestone footbridge—but no amount of sensory seduction could lure Scott and Crystal out from the chasms of their own paranoia. And it was a shame too, all this paranoia, because Crystal had spent months curating the perfect itinerary.
For example, they began the day with the best of intentions and the most pleasant of strolls from their hotel to the Arc de Triomphe. The Place Charles de Gaulle was thick with tourists, and why not? Here was this magnificent curve of masonry, a great sculpture in its own right, and yet each pillar was further carved and sculpted, and there were angels and goddesses and a Roman emperor—