Transparency

by Charles Royce

  “Pay attention to me!” Haylee brings him back.

  “You’re doing so good, Hay.” He pauses. “Hay—”

  “Don’t do the Hay, Hay, Hay thing please. Now is not the time.” Haylee breathes in and out, in and out.

  Out of nowhere, she begins to cry.

  “Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Micah asks. He looks at the instructor for help.

  “Everybody, can we please stop for a second?” The instructor claps her hands and walks toward Haylee. “You okay?”

  “Yes. I don’t know what just happened.”

  “It’s okay, this happens a lot. Let’s all just rest for a second.” The instructor takes Haylee’s other hand, then looks to the other couples. “People, this happens. In my regular job, I also teach what people call—”

  “Breathwork,” Haylee says without thinking. “Of course.”

  “Yes, that’s right: breathwork. One of the first things we learn when we do breathwork, taking in deep breaths over and over like this, is that things often come up.” The instructor uses her hand to swipe at the air in an upward motion, then a downward one. “And out. Past traumas, struggles at home, anticipation of a new baby, life stuff. It’s perfectly normal.”

  AFTER HOLDING THE SUV door open for Haylee, Micah comes around to the passenger side. He sees a man move inside a car on the opposite side of the parking lot. It’s not the same guy lurking outside his condo, though. It’s not Billy Donovan. This man is bigger, more rotund, but Micah’s seen him before, too, outside his building, snooping around the block. The car starts and pulls out of the parking lot onto the main road. It drives away.

  Micah pulls himself inside the SUV, glances at the broken windshield in front of him. “I’m so sorry about not paying attention to you earlier.”

  “What?” She starts the car. “Oh, the crying thing? No, that was something else.”

  Micah places his hand on hers. “Tell me. Is everything okay with Shawn? The baby?”

  Haylee turns off the ignition, turns to Micah. “Ever have one of those moments where you just feel like, ‘Is this it?’”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I don’t know, I just was breathing, and thinking about the baby, and my life, and Shawn working all the time, and then I started thinking my career is over and I’m gonna be a mother and I want to be there for the baby but I love my job but it’s not going anywhere really and I feel like I have so much more to offer my clients and the world and I never thought I would actually be having a baby when I haven’t even accomplished my other goals.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.” Haylee takes her hand from Micah’s, puts it on the steering wheel. “But do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt lost?”

  “Haylee.”

  “Oh right, sorry. Yes, of course you have.” She retakes his hand. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive.”

  “But you, Haylee? Toward the end of my trial, Shawn told me how you inspired him. Your insight into your clients’ spiritual abuse? That was brilliant.” Micah holds her hand harder. “You have a gift of knowing, Haylee. You see people for who they really are, how they’re hurting, why they’re hurting. You’re the most giving, trustworthy person in my life.”

  “Wow.” Haylee places her hand on top of his. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

  “And after the baby, your practice will still be there if you wanna come back to it. Great things are in store for Haylee Connelly. I can feel it.”

  “And how are you holding up? Any more nightmares?”

  “A couple. Usually the same. Lennox is still with me, he tells me there’s someone in the house, I see a figure standing over us trying to stab us.”

  “Whoa. You never told me the details.”

  “What do you think it means?” His eyebrow twitches.

  “Well, I don’t have much experience in dream therapy, but traumatic experiences can show up in most any dream. Your brain is trying to work things out in a safe space.”

  “I don’t feel very safe.”

  “How so?”

  “I think someone might be following me. Maybe multiple people.”

  Haylee lets go of his hand again, turns herself in her seat. “Following you?”

  “Yeah. Like the other morning, before I met you for your doctor’s appointment, I caught some guy I thought I recognized from work staring at me from outside my window. And this morning, I was talking on the street with a cop friend of mine. We were standing in front of our condo building, and a totally different guy was taking pictures of us. Large guy, big round cheeks. And just now, when we came out of the building, I saw him again. Same fat-cheeked guy. When I stared back, he left.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid? Like the first guy coulda just been some peeping pervert lurking around your block. And maybe the guy this morning was just a tourist taking a picture of that building. It’s pretty iconic.”

  “Maybe. That’s why I didn’t say anything to my cop friend.” Micah rests his head against the window glass. “I think I’m just freaking out.”

  Haylee starts the car. “I think maybe we’re both just freaking out.”

  She drives the black SUV out of the parking lot, onto the road. She stops at the intersection and waits for a green light.

  “That’s where my windshield got busted.” Her finger brushes Micah’s chest. “Right there.”

  “That’s the car wash. The car wash? Where you saw—”

  “Ghost. Yes.”

  C h a p t e r 2 5

  THE ONLY KNOWN pictures of Bastien Morrell, aka Ghost, that have been taken in the past ten years are the two that are now front and center on Tracy’s computer screen—a blurry pic of him in a wheelchair photographed by a deceased drug addict, and a much clearer photo of him taken from what looks like a car with a cracked windshield. The latter was taken by Haylee Connelly, wife of Micah Breuer’s defense attorney, Shawn Connelly. Ghost is in profile, holding what looks like a dark jacket, wearing a dingy white tank top. Above his right shoulder blade is a tattoo of a ghostlike figure and fragments of cursive writing, the full transcript eaten away by a bullet-wound scar. Tracy zooms in on Ghost’s tattoo.

  Since Josh chickened out of their plans to play amateur sleuth for the evening, Tracy has reclaimed the rest of her night to resume her latest passion project in defiance of company orders. Even though a Press-sanctioned article on the investigation into Ghost’s past was thwarted by her company, she has opted to do one anyway, perhaps for her blog, or maybe just some simple fodder for Twitter. What started as a regular edit job of her Élan-endorsed interview with Lilith McGuire, who was essentially crucified to a door by Ghost in a mad dash to clear his name, has turned into a crusade of sorts for her. She has taken on a personal mission to find out who Bastien Morrell really was—his background, his family, his life before selling drugs.

  Working in editorial for Press magazine, Tracy has access to databases all over the world. Printouts of obscure articles surround her desk—old French newspapers, military photos of Bastien’s service in a Secret Ops division in the French Foreign Legion, the article on Lilith McGuire’s attack. As she continues reading the obscure Internet article on Ghost, her phone rings.

  “What?” she answers.

  “God. Such disdain,” Josh says. “You still mad?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you so shorty short?”

  “You ever seen this picture of Bastien’s tattoo?”

  “What? You mean Ghost?”

  “He has a name.” Tracy uses her shoulder to secure her phone, and then hits print. “We’ve talked about this.”

  “Sorry, yes, Bastien Morrell. Are you still working on that article?”

  “You remembered his full name. There’s hope for you yet.”

  “The tattoo is the European symbol for an intersection, according to Jenna,” Josh says. “The words around it she doesn’t really know, can’t make sense of it.”

  “Lilith M
cGuire thinks it’s an address. When we interviewed her, she said Bastien mentioned ‘home’ when he talked about it, but she doesn’t remember what else he said.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Josh says. “Bastien is gone now. Does it matter?”

  “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that. You of all people should want to know more about Mr. Bastien Morrell. If the company hired him to kill Lennox, we need to know how and why so we can help Jenna.”

  “You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” Josh says.

  “No one else thought about him either. Do you know there’s only one article that even asks the question Who was Bastien Morrell? And I had to dig for that little fucker. It’s from some obscure publication in the depths of LA, by a black woman of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Your understanding is breathtaking.”

  “Hey, I’m trying here. Look, I applaud anything that will help Jenna prove her case. We know she didn’t do any of this. Not one single part of Lennox’s death.”

  “I know.”

  “But is that what this is really about?” Josh asks. “Getting information that will help our friend Jenna?”

  Tracy stalls. “Yes.”

  Josh laughs. “I’ve known you for what, twelve years now? I can tell when you’re passionate about something. It blinds you. It’s okay, though; I love you for it. So let’s hear it. What else have you found out about Bastien Morrell?”

  Tracy reaches for the Lilith McGuire Press article. “In our article, Lilith mentions seeing Home Schooling for Dummies on Bastien’s bookshelf, and a school photo of a child, maybe five or six years old. A police report lists contents of Bastien’s bedroom, and mentions a few items of children’s clothing, sized for a small child, maybe five or six.”

  “Right. In his letter that implicated Bastien, Lennox mentioned that Ghost had a son.”

  She picks up another sheet of paper. “But I’m looking at the child’s birth certificate. Name is Dennison R. Morrell, a boy, born January 7, 2009. Parents are Bastien L. Morrell and Dawn Elizabeth Gerard. There’s a handwritten note in French, which translates to ‘mother died during childbirth.’”

  “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

  “Lilith told us that just before he got suspicious of her motives and pinned her to the door, Bastien mentioned he’d just taken his son to the airport. At that time, Bastien’s son would have been ten. Ten years old. Not five or six. Do you know how much a child grows from age five to age ten?”

  “Maybe he was short for his age.”

  She stares at the photos on her computer screen. “Maybe.”

  C h a p t e r 2 6

  MICAH CLICKS THROUGH the photos of his condo online, then peruses the sample listing. He’s hired the real estate broker Haylee recommended, but isn’t going to buy in the Connelly’s neighborhood.

  No. He has other plans.

  He won’t dive into the account money he stole from Jenna’s closet just yet. Too risky, especially with other people having access to the old account number, the old password. No. First he’ll go on the vacation Lennox had planned for them. Then, since he’s an official co-owner on the deed of their condo, the real estate broker will sell the home for three million more than Lennox paid for the place not two years ago. Only then will Micah be free to travel the world in style. He’s done with Manhattan.

  And then there’s the problem of that pesky little photographer.

  He can’t be sure, but the man who tried to take his photo with the cop, who followed him and Haylee to Lamaze class, is the same man he’s just spotted down the street—gray shirt, dark jeans, Nikon around his chubby neck. He thought he’d seen him yesterday, too, in the stairwell of Jenna’s building across the street, snapping photos. He could almost hear the clicking. The man had spotted him, stopped, then ran down the stairs to the front entrance, turned around, took a photo of Jenna’s building.

  A ruse.

  He puts the computer to sleep, checks outside. Pesky isn’t there.

  Or is he? Who’s that little bulky man in front of his building?

  Now the man is opening the glass doors to his lobby.

  Micah throws on a shirt and presses the button for the elevator. It takes a few moments to arrive.

  Ding.

  The elevator chugs down seven floors.

  Ding.

  As the elevator doors open, Micah sees the lobby’s glass door closing. He looks down at his bare feet. He sees a screwdriver on the floor underneath his mailbox. It’s still wobbling.

  Micah flings open both sets of glass doors, looks to his left, then to his right. Gray shirt, blue jeans, running around the corner. Micah bolts after the man, the concrete cold on his toes. Past the corner storefront, past the bodega. He turns a second corner.

  No Pesky.

  Micah rushes back to Rutgers, the main street that intersects his. He sees the man in between the fruit stand in the grocery across the street. He runs inside, sees the man in the back of the store, opening a refrigerated cabinet and grabbing a Dr. Pepper.

  Micah reaches across the man’s chest, grabs the camera by its strap. The force of the grip causes the man to drop the can and stumble backward onto a stand of potato chips. The stand falls to the ground, alerting the store clerk to peek down the aisle.

  “Who are you working for?” Micah says in a grunt, while pulling the strap tighter around the man’s neck. “Huh?”

  “Sh-sh—” The man is spewing spit, trying to catch his breath. “Sean. Sh—Sean Connery.”

  “You’re working with Sean Connery?” He pulls the strap even tighter. “Try again.”

  The man grabs Micah’s forearms, pounds them with his fists. “I-I—”

  “Is it West?” Micah squeezes tighter.

  The Nikon releases from the strap and falls to the ground, busting into pieces. The momentary relief gives the man a chance to talk.

  “Elaine,” he says. “Elaine Holcomb.”

  Micah lets go.

  “Shit, dude.” The man coughs, massages his neck, looks at what’s left of his camera on the floor. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for this, you cunt.”

  Micah jabs his finger in the man’s chest, while clenching his jaws. “You tell Elaine to go fuck herself!”

  Micah steps back, smooths his shirt, walks toward the exit.

  “She knows you killed her son!” he hears the man say.

  Micah addresses the clerk on the way out. “All good here, Mr. Wong. I’ve caught this prick snooping around our neighborhood on more than one occasion. Sorry about the mess.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Micah. I’ll clean it up.” Wong looks at the man, who is picking up the lens cap, the broken pieces of plastic, the glass, the memory card, the battery. “Go on! Git!”

  C h a p t e r 2 7

  “GO ON,” JOSH says. He’s trying to acknowledge Phish but can’t really see his face. The young man’s vintage-Bieber swoop of white-blonde hair flows in waves from his forehead like a frosted shower curtain, offering only peekaboo glimpses of his eyes. Phish’s lips are tiny—slits, really—accompanied by a man-boy’s voice at a timbre that seems to be interfering with Josh’s nervous system. “Can you repeat that, though, in a language I can understand? I don’t really speak computer jargon.”

  Josh appreciates the way Phish owns his nerdlike demeanor. Fishbowl glasses, a short-sleeve button-down tucked in with no belt. Apparently the great defense lawyer Shawn Connelly swears by this man at the computer in front of him, so who is he to argue? He’s Josh’s only hope of opening these encrypted files on his weird oval, light-encrusted SSD.

  “The file marked 4JFK is coded in a World War II Navy codex, meaning it’s fairly simple to open once the program can figure out the right key.” Phish drags the folder onto an app. A status bar appears, counting down a percentage of completion.

  “Is it opening?” Josh asks, palms sweating.

  “Yes.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “It’s p
retty big, so it might take a few seconds.”

  “A few seconds? This would take forever on my laptop.”

  “That’s why you came here.” Phish uses his hands to unveil his shop, a basement-level tech graveyard in the Bowery, packed with outdated computers and chunky monitors. Behind them is a single row of newer laptops and external hard drives, viewable from the small window as New Yorkers walk by on the street above. Cardboard signage is taped to the cracked glass, unreadable from inside.

  “What do those signs say?”

  Phish looks up at the window. “Sale prices. We’re cheaper than the Mac Store.”

  “Quite impressive.”

  “Done,” Phish says.

  “No way,” Josh says. “How about the other file?”

  “This underscore symbol? I’ve never seen a file named with just an underscore before.” Phish studies it, double clicks the file name. “I can’t rename it, that’s interesting.”

  “What does that mean?” Josh asks.

  “Could mean several things.” Phish drops the file onto another app, prompting a loud honk sound.

  “What was that?” Josh has never heard a honk like that before.

  “It’s not even letting me analyze it.” Phish tries again. Another honk. “Nope.”

  Josh watches Phish try several other maneuvers, each to no avail. “So that’s it?”

  Phish answers in a chuckle. “Dude, what’s your problem?”

  “Sorry, just really anxious to see what’s in these.”

  “You have enough to sort through with that other file, trust me,” Phish says. “Leave the underscore file with me. I’ll copy it onto my drive, and I’ll figure it out.”

  “Nope, just give me the SSD.” Josh extends his arm, palm up, and flaps his fingers.

  Phish laughs. “Okay, then, what about the 4JFK folder? Don’t you want the full version? It had to unzip it onto my hard drive.”