Team Two. Our office.
At first glance, it wasn’t very appealing. In fact, passing it on the street, I would have guessed it to be abandoned. I peered up at two narrow windows surrounded by a thick wooden frame. The glass was covered with grime and drops of paint, and one of the wavy panes featured a spidery crack, like lightning—tape was holding it together. And on the inside, cheap window shades hung cockeyed, the louvered aluminum blinds pinched and stretched like an Oriental fan. It was ugly and needed some work. But it was ours.
I think this was an apartment, I thought, recalling my walks with Katie. I’d never noticed the other stores along the street, but all of them had apartments above them too. “Are you sure it isn’t an apartment?” I asked, trying to sound excited, but wondering why he had picked this particular place.
“Might have been once, a long time ago. But it was made into an office—a lawyer or accountant or something. They retired two months ago.” Nerd didn’t say any more and instead held up a pair of keys in front of him. He jingled the metal, rattling them until the sound made me smile.
“And it’s ours?” I asked, feeling impressed at how he had managed to swing this without my knowing.
“All of it. As-is too.”
“As-is?”
“Haven’t been inside, but whatever the last tenant didn’t take with them is ours to keep. And as for web access, I already have that taken care of so we can . . . well, you know.”
“Work,” I answered for him.
“Yes, work . . . at a hundred times the library’s speed and bandwidth.”
By now, I could see into Mr. C’s and was tempted to tap on the glass and wave to Carlos. He sat back in one of the pedicure chairs, flipping through a newspaper, his face appearing and then disappearing behind the shutter of black-and-white newsprint. I held back, lowering my hand, knowing he’d want me to come inside. That man loves to talk. We’d stop in after we were done. I had a surprise of my own in mind for Nerd.
“Ready?” Nerd asked. We entered the corner nook that held our office door, adjacent to Mr. C’s. I cringed at the sight of our door, comparing the two. It was in a sad state. Dull metal, painted in drab green with nothing but an eyehole in the center. Carlos’s door was the picture of warmth—welcoming thanks to bright colors and a fancy nameplate.
“It’s just an office door,” I blurted. I did that sometimes—thought aloud.
“It’s a great door! Fantastic! Don’t you think?” Nerd answered, excitedly. “Couldn’t ask for better security.” He slapped his hand flat against the metal. I nodded, understanding now, and agreed with him once I began to see the metal slab from his perspective.
Nerd turned the key, and the sound of sliding metal and latches tumbled behind the door’s face, finishing with a clank before releasing the lock’s bind. The door creaked open, revealing a narrow set of stairs.
“Up?” he asked as he motioned.
“After you,” I began, but the smell of dust and stale air slowed us.
“Leave the door open,” I told him, waving my hand.
“I’ll open the windows too. Get the air moving again.”
As we ascended, I expected to see the type of place where the doors hung crooked and the hinges had voices. Where the cracks in the plaster told a story like the aged lines around a person’s eyes. I thought we’d see layers of torn wallpaper, crinkled and hanging. I expected to step back to an office from decades past, to a room forgotten. But that wasn’t the case. Our new office was the gold at the end of the rainbow.
The stairs opened up to a beautiful office space. My first guess was the past tenant had to have been a lawyer—an expensive lawyer. The windows were beautiful. What I’d mistaken for abandoned were the remnants left behind by painters who hadn’t quite finished. The crack looked to be an unfortunate accident of cleanup. The room was fully furnished. And not with cheap stuff: a plush couch and desks, complete with a conference table. All made of exotic and expensive hardwoods that I couldn’t even identify.
“This is crazy!” Nerd screamed. “I mean, this just can’t—”
“There is no way this is all ours!” I said, talking over him.
“I’ll take that desk . . . that one! Right there!” He jumped up, then ran across the room until he landed on a swivel chair. His body disappeared into the luxurious black leather’s high back. He thumped his hand on the table and pointed at the empty seats across from him, bellowing, “You’re fired!”
He roared and laughed and I joined him, unable to contain myself. “This is too much. Nobody is this lucky,” I said, adding to my earlier sentiment.
“Go with it!” Nerd demanded. “I’ve got the lease—signed, sealed, and delivered. It states: as-is. And that includes whatever they didn’t take with them.”
“Okay. Just don’t get your hopes up. The owner of the property could lay claim to it too.”
“Who? The guy downstairs?” Nerd asked.
I hadn’t realized Carlos owned the whole building. Immediate relief came over me. I trusted Carlos.
“He didn’t want any of it. Said it was too stuffy. Can you believe that?”
“I guess this is all ours, then,” I said quietly, running my hand over the smooth wood of my new desk.
Nerd shook his head, agreeing. “A few e-mails, a phone call, dropped off the deposit, and got a key. He even repeated ‘as-is,’ like a warning.”
“Just not his taste,” I said, guessing. “It’s not like he’d use this style of furniture downstairs.”
I went around the desk adjacent to Nerd’s. It was the bigger desk—what would have likely been the main desk in the office. I sat down and let the chair swallow me in its deep cushion and leather smell. My desk was a type of cherry wood, I realized, and had beautiful curves and lines that made it far too grand for the kind of work we’d planned. Selfishly, I kicked all the sentiments about fairness from my mind. This was our office now, and I was going to make the most of it.
And there was no better time. We needed another case, and we needed the money to flow. Nerd leaned over the arm of his chair, and I heard the sound of a zipper opening. He sat up, producing two new laptops I’d never seen before. My heart swelled a little when he handed one over to me. Slim and light, the end of it tapered to a point. I stared as if it were a jewel, then eagerly placed it in front of me. The cover eased up with the touch of my finger and the screen sprang to life—the empty black exploded into a list of red and yellow and green links from his program. I sighed, satisfied. Nerd had thought ahead, and had us already connected to the
Deep Web and ready to go shopping.
“Thank you,” I said. “I really wanted to work this afternoon.”
“I’ve got some monitors on order too. No reason to hide the screen in here. We’re safe.”
“Safe,” I repeated, liking the sound of that. I searched our new office, trying to find some fault, something to put on my to-do list, but found nothing. Even the previous tenant’s artwork seemed fitting: a collection of black-and-white photos of the city from decades earlier. The photo closest to me even showed the part of town where that old diner was—Suzette’s, I think it was called, only the name on the glass in the shot was Angela’s.
“So much for needing Google Maps,” I said and motioned to the artwork. Nerd followed my hand and raised his chin, but seemed uninterested.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing to the back of the office. I wasn’t sure how we’d missed it, but at the far end of the main room, a ladder climbed the wall. The bottom rungs swung out in a steep pitch so that the top could reach a square opening. What I thought was the attic had been opened and finished, creating a huge loft—big enough for another office. “How cool is that?”
“What do you think is up there?”
“Only one way to find out,” Nerd answered. I followed him to the ladder, clasping my hands around the wooden rungs, climbing, and thinking it unwise for both of us to be on the ladder at the same time. But the old wood, smoot
hed from years of use, hardly creaked; it was thick and sturdy so it easily supported us. The loft was the only space without furniture. One side had been filled with boxes. The floor held the impression of a handful of dusty outlines, revealing that until recently more boxes had been there. Curious, I lifted the top of a box and found newspaper after newspaper. Old and yellowing, the newspapers had become dry but were still readable. Some of the boxes dated to a few years ago, while others went back decades.
“Why would they have kept these?” Nerd asked, sifting through another box. He sneezed suddenly, the sound causing an echo.
A shiver of dust marched into the sunlight diving in through a keystone window. A second sneeze erupted, sending more dust into the air. It wasn’t long before my own nose began to tickle and run.
“Close them,” I pleaded. I waved my hand, trying to push the source of the itch away from my face. “There’s got to be decades of newspapers here.”
“City, too,” Nerd added. Wet, teary streaks cut into his cheeks as he wiped annoyingly at his face. “Even a few prints from the surrounding towns.”
“Maybe we can donate them to the library or something,” I said. As soon as the words left my mouth, though, I began to wonder if there was a possibility of finding news articles about the men my mother murdered—that I murdered.
Could I learn anything from them?
“Or something—” Nerd began, leaning over the rail to look down at our new office. I followed and felt my stomach reach into my throat when I looked down from the high space. “Whatever we do, we should do it soon. Old, dried newspapers? They’ve got to be a fire hazard, sitting up here like that.”
“This space would make for a nice office too, don’t you think?” I asked. Nerd considered it and shrugged.
“I suppose,” he answered. I could sense disappointment. “Nicer down there, if you ask me.”
“It is,” I agreed. I could tell he liked the company. Admittedly, I liked the company too. Especially when it came to working through new Wile E. Coyote designs. I no longer called them Killing Katie designs. Just the thought of those words hurt my heart now, sending regret through me like some sick chill since I hadn’t been able to prevent her murder. “Anyway, not sure we could get furniture up here.”
“A hoist,” Nerd answered, pointing out that the building’s roof had been completely exposed and finished off as well. “We’d have to hoist the furniture over the railing.”
“Too much work,” I quickly answered, assuring him that I’d work next to him. “If we do anything, I want to put a big dry-erase whiteboard down there for us. No more making designs on paper and then burning them.”
Nerd shook his head and made his way back down to his desk. “The wall!” he exclaimed. “We’ll convert the wall to a whiteboard. I saw one at a think tank I used to work at. There’s whiteboard paint we can buy. Cool stuff.”
“Yes, cool,” I answered. “Now let’s get some work done.”
When we settled in front of our laptops, filling our new office with the sound of keystrokes and mouse clicks, I felt like we’d made progress. Good progress.
SIX
WE NEEDED A PAYCHECK. Don’t get me wrong, I loved our new office—we needed that too—but we needed a paycheck. And it wasn’t just about the money, it was about everything else. Steve had been accepted to law school and was about to start classes, and I didn’t want to give him any reason to delay. With a paycheck, I could support the family, show him that he could concentrate on school. Maybe even quit the force if he wanted.
That was the plan, the original idea that led to partnering with Nerd—I’d work so that Steve didn’t have to. But without some actual dollars in hand, I wouldn’t be able to nudge Steve in the direction I wanted, push him the way I believed he needed to go. He was languishing, wallowing in resent and anger more and more. I could see it. The kids could see it. And I’m sure Charlie could see it too. If his first dream of becoming a lawyer didn’t spark something in him again, I wasn’t sure what would.
“You said you had another surprise?” I asked, reminding Nerd. He raised his hands from his keyboard and the office fell quiet save for the high ceiling fan paddling the air. I propped my hand up and rubbed my fingers together, making the universal symbol for money.
“Right, right. Yes!” Nerd said, and brought up his bag, opening it enough to reveal a dark green binder with a silver embroidered design on the front cover. I craned my neck enough to see an official logo. “Our incorporation papers. These are mostly for show since everything is electronic, anyway. And I also took care of the occupancy and business permits, and—”
“These are great, but what I meant was money,” I pinched my fingers together again, anxious. “And speaking of funds, how did you pay for everything?”
“I was getting to that,” he answered, sitting back and sliding the binder in my direction. “We couldn’t produce a paycheck until we became a company. With Team Two incorporated, we can issue payroll checks.” And then I saw what I’d wanted to see since we’d started all of this: a white envelope. Nerd held the envelope, and it caught enough light from the window to show a ghostly tinge of green paper bleeding through. I squinted to read the words. I made out Pay to the Order of . . .
“Thank you,” I told him and snatched the envelope from his hands. “And all of this?”
“Paid out of the business account as expenses,” he quickly answered. “Gotta spend money to make money. And, by the way, depending on how complicated things get, we may need an accountant.”
I tore into the envelope, revealing the product of my hard work, imagining what Steve’s face would look like when I showed him. I saw my name and the amount on the check, but felt certain a zero was missing, maybe two. Dismayed and feeling disappointed, I raised the paycheck and shook my head. If I’d done the math right, there should have been more. A lot more.
“Is this right?” I asked. Nerd caught my tone and lifted his chin. I could tell he had known I would ask. “Are you staggering the checks or something?”
“Yes and no,” he answered. I blinked and lifted my hand impatiently to encourage him to continue. “We’ve got three more months of that coming in—that’s the staggering part. I’m spreading what we have thin to cover some time, but then we’ll be dry. We’ve also got an operating reserve to carry the office for at least six months. But we’ll need another case, and soon.”
I shook my head, thinking that there was no way the numbers were right, and added, “It still seems short.”
“You do realize we’re not getting a full return on the exchange?” he answered with a sincere question in his tone. I didn’t know the first thing about Bitcoin, and maybe I had made the mistake of assuming it carried the same value as the dollar.
“What do you mean?” My tone softened. The disappointment spread, weighing heavily on me. I dropped my first paycheck on the table.
“I set all of this up so that we could be official, could draw a paycheck, pay taxes, so maybe later we could even pay into a benefits plan. But the challenge? We can’t document what we’re doing. As a company, we have to show we’re producing something.”
“Right. I know,” I said and reminded him of something else. “You said that you had a plan to make it look like we were a legitimate business.”
He nodded, “Exactly. But to make that happen, we have to pay. There’s no way around it.”
“What does our company do?”
“Team Two publishes books—hundreds and hundreds of digital e-books. A contact I made spreads purchases across dummy accounts.”
“We launder?” I said, questioning.
He half nodded, confirming. “That’s one word for it. As for my contact—our main buyer—he’s a ghost. Untouchable. That’s one of the reasons I gave him such a good deal.”
“The missing zero,” I mumbled to myself.
“As long as I keep feeding him Bitcoin, the Team Two books sell.”
“And the cost?” I asked, begi
nning to understand the expense. “How much are we losing per dollar?”
Nerd briefly looked away, reluctant to tell me. “A little over fifty percent.”
“Seriously?” I snapped. “We’re getting less than half?”
He chewed on his lip, rolled his chair to the other side of his desk. “It’s actually a bit worse than that,” he added, speaking under his breath. But I heard every word.
“What do you mean?” I yelled. Heat crawled up my neck and face. “How could it be worse than losing half of our money?”
Nerd said nothing.
The look on his face took me back to when I’d nearly killed him. A part of me regretted having done that, but another part of me believed it helped establish who we were. I was the boss, and there was no fucking with the boss or the boss’s money. Part of me liked seeing that my tone scared him, but I needed to know more. For his sake, I raised my hands, indicating I’d calm down and back off. Beyond the anger, there was a stir of emotion—my goal disappearing. After a moment of quiet, he inched his chair forward.
“We have to pay taxes on what we earn,” he answered, motioning to my paycheck. “That will legitimize Team Two as a company, and us as employees. More important, the IRS won’t come sniffing around.”
“I need that money,” I said, lowering my head and fixing a sad gaze on my paycheck. The numbers screamed at me, telling me it wouldn’t be enough to cover the tuition and our living expenses, telling me Steve couldn’t leave his job. “What if I doubled the number of cases to make up the difference?”
“More cases . . .” Nerd said, repeating me. “Equals more money.”
“It’s a good plan,” I said solemnly, reminding myself to appreciate all his hard work. My voice sounded shaky and cracked. “It’s a very good plan. We’ll take on more cases—make up the difference. What’s your buyer’s cut?”
His fingers brushed over the keys, making a sound like the scurry of a mouse behind walls. “Let’s take a dollar. Ten cents goes to the buyer and thirty cents goes to the e-book vendors. From the royalties paid to us, another twenty cents goes to our overhead. Add it all up and we’re left with forty cents.”
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 28