“Don’t worry about it.”
I’d worked closely with Dorothy, even intimately, but I knew almost nothing about her. She never talked about her love life, and I never asked. I wasn’t even sure whether she preferred men or women. Everyone’s entitled to their zone of privacy.
She was an attractive, striking woman with mocha skin, liquid brown eyes, and an incandescent smile. She always dressed elegantly, even though she didn’t need to, since she rarely met with clients. Today she was wearing a shimmering lilac silk blouse and a black pencil skirt and some kind of strappy heels. She wore her hair extremely short—almost bald, in fact. On most women that might look bizarre, but on her it somehow worked. Attached to her earlobes were turquoise copper-enamel discs the size of Frisbees.
Dorothy was a mass of contradictions, which was another thing I liked about her. She was a regular churchgoer—even before she’d found an apartment, she’d joined an AME Zion church in the South End—but she was no church lady. The opposite, in fact: She had an almost profane sense of humor about her faith. She’d put a plaque on her cubicle wall that said JESUS LOVES YOU—EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE, RIGHT NEXT TO ONE THAT SAID I LOVE MARY’S BABYDADDY.
“I think we need to have regular status-update meetings like we used to do at Stoddard,” she said. “I want to go over the Entronics case and the Garrison case.”
“I need coffee first,” I said. “And not that swill that Jillian makes.”
Jillian Alperin, our receptionist and of ce manager, was a strict vegan. (Veganism is apparently the paramilitary wing of vegetarianism.) She had multiple piercings, including one on her lip, and several tattoos. One was of a butterfly, on her right shoulder. I’d caught a glimpse of another one on her lower back too one day.
She was also a “green” fanatic who had banned all foam and paper cups in the office. Everything had to be organic, ethical, free-range, fair-trade, and cruelty-free. The coffee she ordered for the office machine was organic fair-trade ethical beans shade-grown using sustainable cultivation methods by a small co-op of indigenous peasant farmers in resistance in Chiapas, Mexico. It cost as much as Bolivian cocaine and probably would have been rejected by a death-row inmate.
“Well, aren’t you fussy,” Dorothy said. “There’s a Starbucks across the street.”
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts down the block,” I said.
“That better not be a hint. I don’t do coffee.”
“I know better than to ask,” I said, getting up.
The phone rang: the muted internal ringtone. Jillian’s voice came over the intercom: “A Marshall Marcus for you?”
“The Marshall Marcus?” Dorothy said. “As in the richest guy in Boston?”
I nodded.
“You turn this one down, Nick, and I’m gonna whip your butt.”
“I doubt it’s a job,” I said. “Probably personal.” I picked up and said, “Marshall. Long time.”
“Nick,” he said. “I need your help. Alexa’s gone.”
St. Martin’s Press
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALL OF THE CHARACTERS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND EVENTS PORTRAYED IN THIS STORY ARE EITHER PRODUCTS OF THE AUTHOR’S IMAGINATION OR ARE USED FICTITIOUSLY.
“Plan B.”
Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Finder.
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-4185-3
Plan B Page 5