by Ann McMan
Des looked worried for a few seconds, until she realized Evan was pulling her leg.
“I get it,” she said with obvious relief.
“I’m glad you do,” Evan smiled at her. “That makes one of us.”
“What are you two going on about?” Ping asked. She was loading some GladWare containers into a Trader Joe’s freezer bag. “This should be enough. Not that many people show up for Sunday night supper,” she said to Phyllis.
Phyllis filled Evan in. “It’s Mama’s turn to cook—but since she can’t go tonight, I’m dropping everything off.”
That seemed unusual. Ping rarely missed church.
“Why aren’t you going, Ping?” Evan asked. “Not feeling well?”
There was the sound of some half-hearted knocking at the door and Ben Rush sauntered in.
“Hey Phyllis. Hey Des.” He nodded to Evan. “I see you’re right on time.”
Ping zipped the big bag closed and handed it to her daughter. “I’m not going to service tonight because I have some work to do with this reprobate.”
“Hey!” Ben protested. “Reprobate? That’s kind of harsh.”
Ping looked at him over the rim of her half-eye spectacles. “Have you seen a mirror lately? You look like something my cat hacked up.”
“I thought you said pets weren’t allowed in this building?” Ben asked.
“Seriously?” Evan asked him. “That’s the part of her analogy that bothers you?”
He shrugged. “Got anything to eat, Ping? I didn’t have lunch.”
“What else is new?” Ping gestured at her stove, which was loaded up with pots. “Help yourself. But wash your damn hands first.”
“Why?” Ben made a beeline for the stove. He opened a top cabinet and got out a dinner plate. “I’m not dirty.”
“Do not even go there. If you ask me, you should dip yourself in Purell before you set foot outside your apartment.”
Phyllis laughed and made her way to the door. “Nothing ever changes between these two, does it, Evan? C’mon, Des. Let’s go. I wanna get home before the Eagles game.”
“I’m TiVo’ing it,” Ben said as he loaded a plate with stew meat and creamed potatoes. “But I don’t know why I bother. That Agholor is a pussy. They should’ve traded his sorry ass to Buffalo when they had a shot last year.”
“Yeah.” Ping turned to face Ben and worked the flat of her hand around in exaggerated circles. “I’m gonna need you to check all of that. My granddaughter is standing right there.”
“I know that,” Ben said. He gestured at Desiree with a big serving spoon. “Hey, Des? Am I wrong? How much does Agholor suck?”
Desiree looked at her grandmother. “Sorry, Gran . . . he pretty much bites the big one.”
“And we’re outta here.” Phyllis guided Desiree out the door. “Later, Mama. Evan? If she kills his ass, I’m not helping you clean up the mess, capeesh?”
“Don’t worry, Phyll.” Evan held the door for her. “I’ll call ServPro.”
The pair left in a swirl of coats and bulging bags of food.
Evan closed the door and faced her “team.”
“Does one of you two plan to fill me in on what’s going on?”
“Yeah.” Ben sat down at Ping’s kitchen table. “Pull up a chair. Ping has some news.”
Evan eyed Ben’s ridiculously overloaded plate. He’d somehow managed to perch two biscuits on top of his mound of stewed beef and gravy. “That food looks pretty good.”
Ping shook her head. “Go get a plate. I swear . . . the two of you are like a mobile bread line.”
Evan beamed at her. “I didn’t get any lunch, either.”
“Go, go.” Ping jerked her head toward the food. “It’ll take me a minute to boot this thing up.”
Ping grabbed her laptop off a pile of advertising circulars from the Sunday paper.
“Ping did a little recon for us and tried to bust into the servers at Smith, Martin, Squires & Andersen.” Ben laughed. “She thought maybe she could get what we needed and keep us outta the joint. Ain’t that right, Ping?”
Ping was busy logging in to her computer. “Everything but that ‘us’ part.”
“Whattaya mean by that?” he asked.
Ping glared at him. “I’d like to keep her fanny outta the joint. She’s got her little girl to think of. You?” She dropped her eyes back to her screen. “I’d be doing society a favor to let you go up there and bungle your way into getting busted.”
“Hey.” Ben shoved a big forkful of meat into his mouth. “I’ve got three girls, too.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, fool. Nobody needs to see that.”
Evan chose to stay out of their argument. Ping would fill her in when she was ready. Besides, Ping’s food was just too damn good to have divided loyalties. Evan hoped there was pie hiding someplace, too.
“Okay.” Ping found what she’d been looking for. “I tried several brute force phishing attempts earlier and discovered that for such a highfalutin’ place, this joint has a pretty wide back door. All I had to do was call in and pose as a help desk technician. Once I got patched through to one of the senior partners, it was easy to talk him into changing his network password as part of a security update. He was only too happy to oblige—just so he could get off the damn call. Once I had that changed, it was pretty much smooth sailing.”
“No shit?” Evan was intrigued. Maybe they wouldn’t have to break in there tonight, after all?
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ping said, quickly dispatching that fantasy. “Data related to certain top tier clients isn’t stored on their servers—and it’s not in the cloud, either.”
“Which means what?” Evan asked. “Paper files? CD-ROM drives?”
“Could be. But doubtful. I think the data is probably too sensitive to be kept on any network—or on any kind of portable media. Especially if they’re managing work for powerful people who want to stay anonymous.”
“That’s sure as shit the case here,” Ben added.
“So, where would they keep it, then?” Evan asked.
“My poking around proved that they used to have a robust Intranet that interfaced with a gateway computer connected to the outside Internet. But, the gateway computer got removed about seven months ago, give or take, when the firm upgraded their security protocols and access privileges—probably in response to those leaked Panama Papers that made buttholes at every law firm on the planet pucker up.”
“Which means what?” Ben asked impatiently.
“Which means,” Ping continued, “it’s now not connected to anything. So, the company transitioned to a work flow management system called Clio, and then archived old data to offline storage. So unless I’m wrong, they’re probably still running their Intranet like a private network with independent storage. A setup like that wouldn’t show up on the firm’s public-facing network.”
“Can you still get into it?” Evan asked.
“Probably. Dumbass used the same password for everything.”
Ben snorted. “Wonder if they have Hillary’s emails, too?”
Ping squinted at him.
“Okay. If you’re right,” Evan pondered, “how do we find it? And if we do find it, how do Ben and I hack into it?”
“You don’t,” Ping declared.
“Say what?” Ben asked.
“I’m saying you don’t—as in the two of you. I wouldn’t trust either of you to open a box of crackers.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Ping.” Evan pushed her empty plate away. “But that doesn’t help us. How’re we going to get the information we need to go forward on this? I only have a couple more days before Dan pulls the plug on our work and the Senate votes to move Cawley’s nomination to the floor.”
Ping looked back at Evan with narrowed eyes. “I do it.”
“You?” Ben scoffed. “How? You just said you couldn’t hack a private server.”
“Not remotely,” Ping said. “I can’t do it from
here. But if you get me inside, and we can find it—I can get you in. Guaranteed.”
Ben sat back and laughed. “No fucking way. Take you along on a B&E? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What’s your Plan B?”
“There is no Plan B, fool.” She shifted her gaze from Ben to Evan. “You don’t take me along, you got no shot at cracking this. End of story.”
All three of them sat in silence for a few moments. Evan tapped an index finger against the edge of her dinner plate while she thought about Ping’s suggestion.
Ben broke the standoff first. “It’s a fucking stupid idea.”
Evan gazed at him, but didn’t reply.
“There’s no way in hell it would work,” he added.
Ping crossed her arms.
“We’d have to have our heads examined even to consider it.” Ben was running out of arguments and his frustration was evident. “You’re both insane.” He flopped back against his chair in defeat.
Evan picked up her plate and headed to the stove for seconds.
They had several hours to kill—why not enjoy it?
Eventually, Ben got up and followed suit. She handed him a serving spoon.
“We’re actually gonna do this, aren’t we?” he asked.
She nodded at him before reclaiming her seat at the table.
“So, Ping?” she asked, as she speared a hunk of beef. “You got any pie?”
◊ ◊ ◊
Mark Atwood had been right. The place was nearly empty when Tim arrived at five.
The reviews he’d read on Yelp were not exaggerated. Shaken was quite a place. The interior walls were all paneled with polished mahogany. The booths were upholstered with dark green leather and the light fixtures mimicked Victorian-era gaslights. The bar exuded more of a cozy let’s meet for intimate conversation over twenty-dollar cocktails vibe than a pickup joint.
Not that things didn’t get livelier later in the evening—or on Friday nights, when Shaken was lauded for hosting some of the best drag shows in Philly. Tim supposed the venue for those must be located on the other side of the bar, which wasn’t open to view during his visit. The establishment took up space in what had been several storefronts on Camac Street. It was clear that Mark had sunk a lot of money into improvements on this place. Judging by the things Tim had read about the popularity of the bar, he was probably getting a good return on his investment.
Mark seemed genuinely happy to see him again—unlike the awkward reception he’d got earlier from Brian Christensen. But then, Tim recalled that Mark always had been outgoing and friendly. Tim was impressed with how well he looked, too. He was an attractive man, although he still had a slight build and almost porcelain-like features.
As they sat down and started exchanging some easy gossip about their time at St. Rita’s, Tim began to wonder if he’d made a wrong assumption about Mark’s potential involvement with Father Szymanski. Maybe Mark hadn’t been one of the “other boys” Szymanski had referenced the night he propositioned Tim in the shower. He started feeling a twinge of nervousness about even broaching the subject.
Face it, he said to himself. I don’t have the greatest track record with this . . .
He probably should’ve listened to Evan. She had pretty much ripped him a new one for striking out on his own to talk with Joey Mazzetta. And she’d been more than a little bit curious about the mysterious woman who Joey said had offered him $2,500 to keep silent about Szymanski.
“Who was she?” Evan asked.
Tim told her he had no idea, and neither had Joey. He assumed she was working for the Church.
“Did he describe her in any way?” Evan dug in. “Offer any clues about how to find her?”
“No,” Tim said. “Other than to note that she was ‘slick’-looking. I even asked his mother about her when I had a few minutes alone with her on Saturday night. She didn’t recall much, except she said the woman looked ‘foreign’ and dressed very well.”
Evan hadn’t asked any other questions about Mrs. Mazzetta, and she didn’t make any judgments about Tim’s blundering into this part of her case—other than to warn him not to try it again.
And yet, here he was. He didn’t look forward to their conversation when she found out.
Evan always found out.
Tim had been quiet for too long. Mark must’ve noticed some kind of change in his demeanor.
“Are you okay, Tim?” he asked. “Is the drink not good?”
Mark had poured Tim a generous tumbler of Basil Hayden’s before they headed to one of the more remote booths in the bar to sit down and get reacquainted.
“No. The bourbon’s fine. I’m sorry. I’m just . . . preoccupied.” He took a deep breath. “Part of that concerns you.”
“Me?” Mark looked perplexed. “How so?”
“It’s kind of a long story. But I’ve talked with a couple of our other friends from the basketball team—about their interactions with Father Szymanski.”
He could tell by the immediate change in Mark’s expression that he knew exactly what Tim meant by “interactions.”
“Look, Tim,” he began. “I think I know where you’re headed, and you need to know that I have no desire to come forward with any allegations against him. I’m done with all of that. I made my peace with it years ago. I mean no disrespect to you,” he added quickly. “I just think it’s better to short-circuit any concerns you might have about me right up front.”
“Concerns?” Tim wasn’t sure what Mark meant. “Why do you think I wanted to talk with you about this?”
Mark shrugged. “It makes sense that you’d want to do what you can to protect the Church. I’d have to be an imbecile not to be able to connect the dots between everything that’s happening now with all the grand jury findings and your sudden appearance here today.”
Tim felt ashamed. “I apologize that I haven’t reached out to connect with you before now. I have no excuse for that and I’m sorry.”
“Why would you contact me?” Mark asked. “It’s not like you’re on the lookout for a safe gay bar. Which, by the way,” he added, “this is.”
“No,” Tim nodded. “You’re right. My visit is not about that.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think so.” Mark said. “If that ever changes, though, you know who to call. I hope my saying that doesn’t offend you.”
“No. I’m not at all offended by that, Mark.”
“I didn’t think you would be. You always seemed pretty cool about me being gay.”
“We’re all children of the same God,” Tim said. “As far as I know, He doesn’t play favorites.”
“No. But Father Szymanski sure did.”
“I think I knew that,” Tim confessed. “But I never did anything about it. I can’t forgive myself for my silence.”
“What could you have done, Tim? He’d have just denied it. You were only a kid, like the rest of us. Nobody would’ve believed you.” He made a dismissive sound. “Nobody believes half of the stories now. Have you seen what they expect you to have as proof—even before they’ll sit down and talk with you?”
“I know. Joey Mazzetta told me about his experience when I went to see him last week.”
Mark seemed surprised. “You saw Joey last week? Before he got killed in that robbery?”
Tim nodded.
“Man. That was some awful shit. Poor guy.” Mark was silent for a few moments. “Did he file a complaint with the reparations committee?”
“He tried,” Tim said. “But he didn’t have the corroboration they required so he gave up.”
“I don’t doubt it. As many cases as there are that go forward, there probably are five times as many that just go away—for those exact reasons.” He finished his glass of iced tea and beckoned to the handsome young man who was busy restocking the bar. “Hey, sweetie? Will you bring us another round?”
“I probably shouldn’t,” Tim said.
“Trust me. You’ll need it when you listen to my story.”
�
��Your story?”
Mark nodded. “That’s why you’re here, right? To find out what I know about Szymanski?”
“I suppose so. But not because I’m trying to protect him,” Tim said. “Nobody sent me here to talk with you.”
“Oh, trust me,” Mark laughed. “That’s already happened.”
“What do you mean?” Tim had a sinking feeling he already knew what Mark meant.
“Some classy dame wearing four-inch stilettos came waltzing in here and offered me a big settlement to keep my mouth shut—a cash settlement. I didn’t take the money. I told her I wasn’t going to say anything about that pervert—or his pals.” He fastened the top two buttons on his pullover. “Do you think it’s cold in here? Hey, Santino?” He addressed the bartender again. “Would you ask David to turn the damn thermostat up—please? I already asked him twice.” He faced Tim. “Sorry. That dude has perpetual PMS. I swear he gets more hot flashes than my aunt Gladys.”
Tim was confused about something. “Why did you turn down the money if you already knew you weren’t going to go forward with anything?” he asked. Then he quickly thought better of his question, and how rude it probably seemed. “I’m sorry, Mark—that was inappropriate. I shouldn’t have asked about it.”
Santino delivered their refills and affectionately squeezed Mark’s shoulder.
“Thanks, amore.” Mark patted Santino on the derriere before shifting his attention back to Tim. “I don’t have any problem talking with you about any of this. I made my peace with it all years ago—long before any of this other stuff became public. I didn’t take the money because I was stupid.” He shook his head. “Santino bitched me out later because we could’ve used the cash to upfit the kitchen in this place—which would finally allow us to offer better food options. Right now, we’re doing good to manage decent appetizers. But, oh well . . . What’s done is done. Besides,” he took a drink of his iced tea, “I don’t want to be beholden to anybody. What if they came back later and tried to extort us? That shit happens in this town all the time—especially to small clubs like this.”
“I think you made the right decision, too,” Tim acknowledged. “Did this woman tell you who she was representing?”
