Sometimes Quickly

by Anne Laughlin

  “Who is she?”

  “Ryan’s new girlfriend, and they seem pretty tight. She’s not going to want Allison to learn about this. Say you followed her and discovered their relationship.”

  Tim hung up and poured another drink before calling Camille. He knew she was waiting to hear what Braddock had on Peg. He couldn’t postpone the call. Maybe he’d get voicemail and avoid another torturous conversation about her broken heart.

  “What?” Camille barked. She sounded like she’d been interrupted having sex.

  “You know, if you don’t want to talk to anyone, it would be a lot better if you didn’t answer the phone,” Tim said.

  “I don’t want to miss anything.” Her voice moved away from the phone. Tim heard her say, “Why don’t you be a sweetie and get us something to drink? I’ll just be a sec.”

  “Did I catch you in the middle of something?” Tim asked, not hiding his sarcasm.

  “It’s not a problem. We were just getting started. What’s up?”

  “A couple things. I just got a call from Braddock and he’s ready to go.”

  “Who’s Braddock?”

  “The guy who knew Ryan way back when. Jesus, you’re not on top of things lately.”

  “Hey. You’re in charge of details. That’s what I pay you for.” That was news to Tim. He thought she paid him for his amazing hacking skills.

  “This could do the trick. I think we have something that will really scare Ryan” He told her what it was and how much it would cost them.

  “Believe it or not, Allison’s worth it,” Camille said.

  “You can say that while you’re in bed with another woman?”

  “It only reminds me of Allison. I’m ruined for life.” Tim heard a kissing sound and a giggle. He held the phone far away from his ear. “What else do you have?”

  “I heard from Henry over at Laura Daniels’s company. They’ve compiled the software and they plan to torture test it over the next couple of days. A new FDA meeting has been set for Thursday.”

  “Is Henry clear on what he’s supposed to do?”

  “Perfectly. All he needs is the exact time of the meeting so he can set a timer and detonate the virus.”

  “So much good news. Let’s savor it. I almost feel sorry for Laura Daniels,” Camille said.

  “You feel sorry for someone?”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry. This too shall pass. Anything else?”

  “Just one thing. Henry noticed that Daniels has a new girlfriend. He took a picture of her and sent it to me.”

  “So?”

  “It’s that cop friend of Ryan’s.”

  “Fuck. It’s like a cabal.”

  “She’s a cop. A detective. I don’t like her being near this operation.”

  “I’m not worried. Clients pay us for our seamless, untraceable work. The cop isn’t going to stumble upon anything,” Camille said.

  “Maybe.”

  “And if Peg doesn’t bite on the Braddock plan, we’ll move to Plan B.”

  “Don’t tell me about your Plan B.” Tim was firm about this. There were certain things he didn’t want to know.

  “Relax. That’s just between Sam and me,” she said. “But you should know, Tim, that I’m not letting this go. My life has been barely livable since Ryan stole Allison from me.”

  Tim said good night and heard a very girly yelp before the line went dead. We all grieve in our own ways, he thought.

  Chapter Ten

  Wednesday, January 7

  Peg stared across the conference room table, trying to concentrate on a florid and extremely earnest professor emeritus from the University of Chicago, an expert witness for her upcoming trial. The room was adjacent to her office at Mulroney Harris. A lunch service had been set up, replacing the breakfast one from early in the morning. She didn’t intend to take this through dinner.

  Dr. Newman was droning on about microbiology and the pharmaceutical industry, addressing Peg as if she were a jury. She was prepping him for his testimony, but she was having a hard time tracking his detailed theory on how bacteria made its way into a batch of albuterol manufactured by Peg’s client. She was sleep deprived, which would explain her lack of focus. She worried a jury would simply be bored to death before the science made sense to them. Peg understood the science, but her mind kept returning to the cause of her lost sleep. The thought of Allison made her smile.

  Just as Peg was going to call a break so she could phone Allison, her assistant, Carly, opened the door.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Peg, but I need to speak to you.”

  Peg got up instantly, glad for the interruption. She had to get her concentration back. She suddenly felt that everything she did in her law practice bored her to death, and when did that start to happen?

  She excused herself and stepped out into the hall, closing the door behind her.

  Carly stood in front of her, perfectly relaxed, one of the most poised twenty-three-year-olds Peg had ever seen. She was attractive and smart, and there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d be her assistant for long. Peg had already been through two in her short tenure in the Chicago office, and she wished them well when they left. Still, it was a pain in the ass to keep training people to her idiosyncrasies.

  “What’s up?” Peg asked her.

  Carly was somber. “I’ve got a guy on hold who insisted you’d want to talk to him. Says his name is Braddock.”

  Peg felt her stomach drop, as if she’d hit a pocket of turbulence. She could feel the color drain from her face.

  “I need to take that call,” Peg said. “Let him know I need a few minutes while I let Dr. Newman go for the day.” Peg wasn’t sure how she was managing to speak coherently. She felt like she’d just been hit by a concussion bomb. “Then you go to lunch.”

  “Peg, it’s only ten thirty. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Go shopping. Go for a long lunch. Just go.” She didn’t want a concerned Carly hovering outside her office.

  She took a few deep breaths as she watched Carly speak briefly to Braddock and then gather her things and walk down the hall. These weren’t calming breaths, no counting to five on the inhale, five on the exhale. She was simply trying to get some air in her lungs. She knew that her sleepless nights of lovemaking were about to turn into sleepless nights of pain. Slashing pain. She now had so much more to lose than ever before.

  She pulled herself together, dismissed Dr. Newman, and picked up the phone in her office.

  “Is that you, Ryan?” Braddock’s voice sounded rough, like he’d sanded his throat with steel wool. She barely recognized it.

  “It’s me.”

  He barked a laugh. “Don’t go on and on about how glad you are to hear from me. We don’t have all day.”

  “Just tell me what this is about.” She could hear a drink being poured on the other end of the line. A picture of the present day Jim Braddock started to form.

  “Well, Peg, the time has come for us to renegotiate the terms of our agreement.” He sounded relaxed, as if he were settling a whiplash case with an insurance company.

  “I believe the terms of our deal were met,” Peg said. “There’s nothing further to discuss.”

  “In a situation like this, meaning when you fuck up as badly as you did, it’s never really put to rest, is it?”

  “I don’t intend to play this game with you.” Peg looked at her cell phone as it lit up on her desk. It was Allison calling. She turned it upside down.

  “You’re still cool as a cucumber,” Braddock said. “It’s as if you don’t realize that one call to the Justice Department and your life will be turned upside down. Had you forgotten that?”

  “I doubt that would happen. It’s old news now.” She didn’t know if that were true. She felt a familiar sense of shame coming over her like an oily cloak.

  She could hear him lighting a cigarette. “Funny you should be so ignorant of the law, you being a lawyer and all. Perhaps I should explain it to you.”


  “I’d be interested in what you’ve dreamed up,” Peg said. She was staring out her window without seeing a thing.

  “This is no dream, Peg. You’re responsible for a witness being murdered and a U.S. marshall being wounded. That’s quite a fall from the cocky young ADA you were back then, the golden girl, star of the office.”

  “Sounds like you had a little crush on me, Jim.”

  “You know what? I actually did. You were pretty hot back then. But then I found out I had the wrong equipment to have a chance with you.”

  “You’d never have had a chance with me anyway.” She heard ice rattling against a glass, a sound as familiar as her own voice, even after seventeen years.

  “But here’s the thing,” he said. “The golden girl had a pretty gigantic booze problem, and you were starting to get out of control. I could smell you in the office, Peg. That day-old vodka was oozing out of your skin.”

  “You aren’t anywhere near telling me what this has to do with the here and now. I’m giving you two minutes before I hang up.”

  He took another drag of his cigarette. “I figure your memory of what happened is pretty hazy, so I’ll fill in the details.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m familiar with the details.” Peg swung her chair around and propped her elbows on her desk, her forehead in one hand, the phone in the other. She stared blindly as those details came flooding back.

  *

  January, 1996

  Eighteen years earlier

  Peg slapped the snooze button of her alarm for the fourth time. She stayed beneath her comforter and began to assess the damage. When she reached for the other side of the bed, there was no stranger lying next to her. That was promising.

  She threw the covers off and swung her legs to the side of the bed. There was no question she’d drunk plenty. The hangover was bad. She knew she’d survive it, though why she’d want to was becoming a question. She glanced at her clock and remembered she had a meeting with her staff in an hour. She’d need to be coherent, decisive. At the moment, that didn’t seem remotely possible.

  She stood on shaky legs and made her way to the bathroom, shuffling through the weeks of dirty laundry flung about the room. She passed a stack of beer cans and an empty bottle of vodka in the living room. Had she drunk all of that last night? She hadn’t a clue. She peeked in the kitchen where a stack of dirty dishes teetered in the sink. The bits of food clinging to them were starting to smell.

  She entered the bathroom and saw how bad last night had been. The toilet seat was up and there was vomit around the rim. Her stomach instantly rebelled. She fell to her knees and emptied out what she could. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. There wasn’t much to throw up. But her body seemed to insist there was. Wave after wave of gut-clenching nausea overwhelmed her, leaving her sobbing, drenched with sweat, trembling. She lay at the base of the toilet, the porcelain cool against her face. Her alarm went off in the distance.

  The only thing she remembered distinctly was leaving work at a reasonable hour, with a promise to not stop at any bars on the way home. And a further promise to not have more than three beers once she got there. She made it past the bars, but at the end of her third beer at home she’d found a favorite movie on TV, which called for a bottle of vodka. After that, the evening was a blank. The drinking limits she made up were a joke. She’d yet to adhere to one of them. Only beer and wine during the week, no drinking before five on the weekend, one glass of wine with dinner, no shots at the bar, only drinking with other people, only drinking alone, eat something before drinking, no drinking on Mondays and Tuesdays. She knew she couldn’t do even the easiest of these, and each day she felt despair grip her firmly. A drink was the only way to find relief.

  Her day was a light one, and by three in the afternoon, Peg felt close to human. She sat at her desk and reviewed files and watched the clock. She was the deputy chief of the Organized Crime division of the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, a plum job for a thirty-one-year-old. She distributed the workload, supervised ongoing cases, developed legal theories and strategies with the lawyers on her staff. She was most happy in the courtroom, where she was the lead attorney on the most important or visible of their cases. She loved her work.

  The case that was currently demanding most of her attention was the upcoming trial of Johnnie Lanzito, the head of a small New York family. He was charged with three counts of murder. Lanzito had been negotiating with other second-tier organizations to take a run at the ranking family in the city, the Ferrantes, who were pleased by Lanzito’s indictment. The three dead were Ferrante soldiers.

  The biggest threat to Lanzito was the testimony of one of his captains, Tadzio Scarpelli. His grand jury testimony had been key in getting the indictment. In exchange for it, Scarpelli received immunity and a place in the witness protection program. He waited for the trial in his new home, in a location known only to a few in the U.S. marshall’s office.

  Peg was finishing up a phone call when Jim Braddock walked through her door and threw a file on her desk. She cast a wary eye on it. “What is it?”

  “It’s an outline I’ve worked up of Scarpelli’s testimony.” He sat in one of the two chairs facing her desk, staring at her over steepled fingers. “Are you going to assign him to me?”

  Peg pushed the file back across to him. He sat placidly, his appearance rumpled no matter how pressed his suit or straight his tie.

  “I’ve already assigned you your witnesses. Two of them. I’m trying to figure out why you’d be looking for more work.”

  She knew very well that Braddock was only willing to do extra work if he profited from it in some way. Being the attorney in charge of the star witness of the trial would bring him recognition, something Peg knew he was always seeking. They had both applied for the deputy chief position, and his attitude toward her changed when she got the job. It was clear he disliked reporting to her and resented her plum assignments. He didn’t take great pains to hide it.

  Braddock seemed like a fixture in her life. She’d endured him in almost every class and study group during law school, and she was relieved to be rid of him when they graduated. He was sardonic, gossipy, overly familiar, and tended to cross into her personal space, which she detested. When she got a job at the U.S. attorney’s office, her heart sank to find him already entrenched there. He’d immediately requested a transfer into her division. She felt his eyes on her whenever they were in the same room.

  He shifted in his seat and stared at Peg. “Who are you assigning him to?”

  “That would be me,” Peg said. She got up and poured more coffee from the carafe on her worktable. She was bored with him.

  “God, it must be good to be Queen, Peg. You get all the good work.”

  “That’s me. Good Queen Peg.”

  He leaned slightly forward. “Do you know Scarpelli’s location, where you’re going to prep him?”

  “Nope, I have no idea, and I don’t know when I’ll find out. That’s for my eyes only, which is part of the reason I’m handling Scarpelli myself. The WITSEC people want as few lawyers in this chain as possible.”

  Braddock rose, a smile on his lips which didn’t reach his eyes. “I worry about you, Peg. You don’t look as well as you used to. Like you’re tired to death. Adding this to your workload won’t help that.”

  Peg turned back to the papers on her desk. “You needn’t worry about me. Not that I think you really are.”

  He paused at the door. “Are you coming to the party tonight?”

  Peg looked up. “What party?”

  “Pam Alexander’s engagement party at Halliday’s. Everyone will be there. You should make an appearance at least.”

  She was horrified at the thought. “No. Please tell me I don’t have to.”

  “I thought you liked Pam,” he said.

  “I do. I just…never mind. I’ll stop by after I finish up here.”

  She blew out a breath as soon as Braddock closed the door behind him. It
wasn’t that she didn’t drink regularly with her colleagues, but she didn’t know how social she could be tonight. Her hangover was better, but Braddock was right about one thing. She was bone-tired. It would look bad if she didn’t show up, so she’d go straight there and then home. She would drink only beer.

  Before leaving, she took a call from a deputy U.S. marshal, who gave her the address of Scarpelli’s new home and a date set aside for her to meet with him there. He told her she was the only one outside their office who knew his location and to keep it that way. Peg had no problem with that.

  *

  She got to Halliday’s at eight and headed to the back room. She’d just come from a women’s bar in the Village where she’d fortified herself with drinks and some mildly flirtatious talk with a new bartender there.

  As she reached the end of the bar, a woman stood and grabbed on to her coat sleeve. She was nearly as tall as Peg and dressed in a sleek business suit. Her green eyes bore into Peg’s questioning ones.

  “You said you’d call,” the woman said. It wasn’t an accusation or complaint, just a fact. Peg tried to step back from her, but she still had hold of her arm. She didn’t have the faintest notion who she was, but she knew she wasn’t going to enjoy finding out. She smiled at the woman and gently removed her arm from her grip.

  “Remind me when it was I said that to you. And remind me of your name, too. I’m absolutely terrible about those.” She tried to keep it conversational.

  “You don’t remember me?” She started to look unhappy. “I’m Angie. You said my name enough times. You’d think you’d remember it.”

  “I remember you, of course. I need a little help with the where and when,” Peg said.

  Angie sat back on her barstool and gave Peg some breathing space. “It was last Tuesday, at Vixen’s.”

  “Christ, yes. There’s no way I could forget that night, not with you.”

  But she had completely forgotten it. She was in Vixen’s practically every night, every indistinguishable night. She felt her gut cave in, as she always did when people told her about what she did during a blackout. “Listen, I have to go to a party in the back. Would you write down your number again and we’ll start over?”