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“As a prominent public servant admits that the secrets he has hidden for years have harmed those he loves most and brought horrific tragedy to innocent people, I have come to realize the danger of a life lived in a lie. Accordingly, I am making clear today that I am a gay man. I will continue to run Sparks Industries as I have for nearly twenty years and thank my colleagues and investors in advance for their continued support. I have now said all that I wanted to say, or will say, about this subject.”
“Good for him,” Max said.
Paul Bandon’s disclosure had been forced by circumstance, but Sam Sparks’s had not. As far as the public knew, Nick Dillon murdered Robert Mancini after Mancini blackmailed him. No specifics about the nature of the blackmail. No details such as the Blagojevich-style hairpiece and wedding band they’d found in his car, props Dillon had worn on his arranged dates with Katie Battle and Stacy Schecter. No mention of Sparks.
She looked at her watch. One p.m. on the dot. “Think they’re going to show?”
“Yeah, they’ll be here.”
“How do you think it’s going to go?”
“I don’t know. I understand what Tanya’s trying to do, but it could be an absolute train wreck.”
Tanya’s lawyer was still hammering out a plea deal, but most of the big-ticket items were in place. She would plead to fraud charges and serve four years probation with intensive psychiatric counseling. A support center for adult victims of child sex abuse was trying to convince one of the local colleges to admit her. Given the stunt she pulled with NYU, she’d be a hard sell, but one of her former professors was vouching for the work she’d done as Heather Bradley.
But today’s meeting wasn’t about Tanya the defendant; she had asked for an opportunity to apologize to Megan’s parents. To Ellie’s surprise, Jonas and Patricia had agreed. Maybe now that they had someone else to blame, they might be able to begin to forgive Tanya Abbott.
The upcoming sit-down between Tanya and the Gunthers was not the only case of strange bedfellows to emerge from the aftermath. Stacy Schecter had stopped by the precinct the previous week to thank Ellie and Robin Tucker. She said they’d saved her in more ways than one, and Ellie believed her. The Craig’s List account was closed, and the Erotic Review profile was gone.
As she’d left the building, Jess had been smoking a cigarette as he waited for his sister on Twenty-first Street. He commented on her Boomtown Rats T-shirt. They were still talking when Ellie showed up. She lied and said she had more work to do, and then watched from upstairs as they made their way to Plug Uglies without her.
It wouldn’t last. It never did with Jess. But women never seemed to mind.
The unspeakable secret that had plagued Sam Sparks’s entire adult life came and went from the television in a flicker as the talking heads bounced directly back to the Bandons. Now the screen displayed a photograph of Laura Bandon, with bullet-point highlights of her bio: Princeton, Georgetown Law School, former associate at Covington & Burling prior to the birth of her son.
“I still don’t get it.” The female anchor sounded as if she had been personally betrayed. “Why in the world would she stay with this guy?”
“So,” Max said, hitting the power button on the remote, “would you stay?”
“Why? Are you planning to scope out the junior high schools this afternoon?”
“You’re gross.”
“You started it.”
“Seriously. I’m a man, and I don’t get it. I’ve had girlfriends—”
“No, you haven’t. No one before me.”
“Fine. I’ve had members of the opposite sex throw me in the doghouse for a week just for smiling at someone the wrong way.”
“Well, you do have an amazing and unrepentantly flirty smile.”
“So much so that it’s gotten me in trouble. But then some guy like Bandon gets caught doing the nanny’s daughter—and let’s set aside the fact that she’s a child, for Christ’s sake. Seriously, why wouldn’t a woman like Laura Bandon take off?”
“Because she loves him.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Maybe. Love’s a powerful thing.”
A knock at the door caught their attention. A secretary showed Jonas and Patricia Gunther into the room.
“I’m sorry,” Patricia said. “Were we interrupting?”
“Of course not.” Max stood and gestured to the unoccupied chairs around the table. “Come on in.”
Jonas reached for his wife’s hand as soon as they were seated. Maybe Ellie had been wrong about their daughter’s death being the beginning of the end for them.
“Is Heather—Tanya, I’m sorry. Is Tanya here yet?”
“I’m sure she will be shortly,” Ellie said. “This was very important to her.”
Max took a seat at the head of the table. “She’ll tell you herself, but I’ve spent a lot of time with Tanya the last couple of weeks. Her defense attorney suggested it so our office would have a better sense of the person we’re dealing with. You’d be perfectly within your rights to be skeptical, but, for what it’s worth, I do believe that she never realized she was putting your daughter in jeopardy.”
They were interrupted by another knock. The same secretary, this time with Tanya Abbott. She had pulled her hair into a demure knot at the nape of her neck and was dressed in a conservative navy blue skirt and tan turtleneck.
Max handled the awkward introductions. “Mr. and Mrs. Gunther. This is Tanya Abbott.”
Tanya stepped into the room with her hands clasped in front of her like a child making a presentation to a class. All eyes were on her, but her gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle of the table. She cleared her throat before speaking.
“Thank you for coming here, Mr. and Mrs. Gunther. I’ll admit that I didn’t know your daughter well. But she was a good person—to me and to her friends. And she was smart and sweet and, just, a really good person.” She was starting to stray from her prepared words. “And I just want you to know, and I swear I mean this from the bottom of my heart, that if I could rewind the clock—”
Her voice cracked, and Patricia Gunther choked back a sob.
“If I could rewind the clock and change places with Megan, I would. I really would.”
Ellie blinked back a tear forming in the corner of her own eye as Patricia leaped from her chair. Tanya initially flinched as Patricia grabbed her in a tight embrace, but then returned the hug.
“We don’t blame you, Tanya. We forgive you. Our daughter was a good person.”
Jonas was on his feet, holding on to his wife as she cried. “Megan would want us to forgive you,” he said.
As Ellie watched the Gunthers console the woman who set in motion the chain of events that eventually led to the death of their only daughter, she marveled at the ability of human beings to still surprise her. Just as love had kept Laura Bandon at her husband’s side, it had helped these two forgive not only Tanya, but each other. It had blinded Sam Sparks from seeing whatever part of Nick Dillon killed Robert Mancini and Katie Battle. It had caused Katie Battle to choose her mother’s care over her own security. It had brought a son to kill to protect his mother from public humiliation. And it had kept Tanya Abbott running to the person who abused her as a child, because it was the first feeling of love that she had ever known from a man.
Love was, in fact, powerful.
Powerful enough that for just one second, Ellie thought about the father she had lost, the mother who demanded more from her children than she could ever give as a parent, and the brother who was her best and sometimes only friend, and wondered if there were any limits to what she would do for them. And for just a moment, she held the gaze of the man on the opposite side of the conference table and could believe that the ties of a different kind of devotion might eventually find her.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Like all of my earlier novels, 212 was inspired by real-world events. If the revelation of the hidden strings tying fiction to life ruins the magic for you,
skip the next five paragraphs and jump forward to the shout-outs.
Many readers will have recognized at least one of the headline-capturing cases that made its way into 212. On March 12, 2008, then New York Governor Eliot Spitzer admitted during a live press conference that he was the mysterious “Client 9” listed in a federal criminal indictment involving an escort service called Emperors’ Club VIP. In the ensuing days, the political career of a man once mentioned as a potential presidential candidate had ended, the public learned more than it needed about seemingly privileged young women who nevertheless sold their bodies for money, and members of the media openly challenged the former first lady of New York’s decision to stand by her man.
Governor Spitzer was not the first state governor to be brought down by a sex scandal (nor of course, as the last year has taught us, would he be the last). In May 2004, under pressure from the Willamette Week, a free weekly paper in Portland, former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt revealed that he had engaged in a three-year sexual relationship with his fourteen-year-old babysitter while he was Portland’s mayor in the 1970s. Once an honor student, the former babysitter grew into a troubled adulthood marked by drug dependency, further victimization, and a stint in federal prison. Several members of the governor’s political inner circle were alleged to have known about the so-called “affair” and abetted a thirty-year cover-up. A civil settlement paid to the woman in the mid-1990s came with a confidentiality agreement.
To a plot loosely inspired by threads of these two political sex scandals, I added the role of the Internet in the modern sex trade. Even the quickest scan of Craig’s List reveals that scalped concert tickets and used sporting goods are not the only easy scores on the Web. As I perused barely veiled offers of sex for money online, I thought of the danger these women put themselves in. On April 14, 2009, two weeks after I turned in the manuscript of 212, a New York City woman named Julissa Brisman was shot in a Boston hotel room after advertising her services as an erotic masseuse on the Web site. The media dubbed her alleged murderer “The Craig’s List Killer.”
Craig’s List is not the only Web site in 212 that is real. So is the Erotic Review, where “hobbyists” across the country post book review-like feedback on the “providers” who service them, down to details about appearance, professionalism, restrictions, and promptness. And the Campus Juice site that terrorizes poor Megan Gunther is based on Juicy Campus, which enticed users with the promise of anonymous campus gossip, going so far as to instruct especially cautious posters to use Internet provider cloaking devices to avoid detection. When Juicy Campus went out of business in 2009, its owner blamed the economic downturn, rather than the controversy that led to civil suits, investigations by attorneys general, and spam attacks against the site.
In the final pages of 212, Ellie marvels at the continual ability of human beings to surprise her. I feel the same way, and for that I’m grateful. The moment I’m no longer surprised by the kinds of events that inspired the plot of this book, it will be time for me to stop writing.
For ongoing assistance in the worlds of technology and law enforcement, I am thankful to Gary Moore, NYPD Detective Lucas Miller, retired NYPD Lieutenant Al Kaplan, retired NYPD Desk Sergeant Edward Devlin, Josh Lamborn, David Lesh, and Deputy District Attorneys John Bradley, Chris Mascal, Greg Moawad, Heidi Moawad, and Don Rees. I thank my students at Hofstra Law School for tethering me to a more realistic and vibrant world than I might otherwise know as a writer and law professor. I thank Lee Child for serving as 212’s first reader and Lisa Unger for her help with 212’s title.
I consider myself blessed by the most effective, professional, and supportive team in publishing: At the Spitzer Literary Agency, Philip Spitzer (no relation to Eliot) and his associates Lukas Ortiz and Lucas Hunt; Holden Richards at Kitchen Media; and, at HarperCollins, Christine Boyd, Jonathan Burnham, Heather Drucker, Kyle Hansen, Michael Morrison, Jason Sack, Kathy Schneider, and Debbie Stier. I especially thank Jennifer Barth for her tireless commitment to my work and irreplaceable editorial eye.
I appreciate the generosity of readers who donated to worthy charitable organizations to see their names lent to some of the characters in 212. Also making cameos as the 212 bartenders were Dennis, Jill, and Mark, the people who keep me fed and hydrated when I don’t feel like cooking (i.e., every day).
I send a special note of thanks to the online friends I’ve made through my Web site, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Writing is a solitary life, but you have become part of my workplace. Like the constant presence of colleagues, your notes provide community, encouragement, sanity, and—ah, yes—procrastination. OMG, I appreciate it. LOL. If you read my books and haven’t yet connected with me online, I hope you’ll do so.
Finally, I thank my husband, Sean. Not enough words. Ever.
About the Author
A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, ALAFAIR BURKE now teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. A graduate of Stanford Law School, she is the author of the Samantha Kincaid series, which includes the novels Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and Close Case. Her most recent book is Angel’s Tip, the second thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher.
www.AlafairBurke.com
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ALSO BY ALAFAIR BURKE
THE ELLIE HATCHER SERIES
Dead Connection
Angel’s Tip
THE SAMANTHA KINCAID SERIES
Judgment Calls
Missing Justice
Close Case
Credits
Jacket photography © Image Source/Getty Images
Jacket design by Archie Ferguson
Copyright
212. Copyright © 2010 by Alafair Burke. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
EPub Edition © February 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-198614-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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