by Vivian Barz
So that meant, Susan had realized with disappointment, that Ivor would have had no idea if Tori had been investigating DOTE. He later confirmed as much.
“Tori fancied herself a serious investigative reporter, and more power to her, I guess,” he said with a snort. “It was just annoying because I never knew what she was working on until the moment I had her story on my desk. I hate to say it—and I’m sure it’s foolish of me to, with her being missing—but when she left, the environment improved around here exponentially. When she didn’t come back, we all just assumed that she’d grown tired of trying to boss us around.”
Ivor had handed over Tori’s laptop like it was a burden he was grateful to unload, explaining that he didn’t find it odd that she’d left it. “A lot of rich kids go to Lamount. Judging by the way Tori acts, I’d just assumed she was one of them. I figured a laptop wasn’t something she’d have a problem replacing, even an expensive one like this. For all I knew, she had a couple. I was going to keep it for a while longer, and if she didn’t come back to claim it, the plan was to use it as a communal computer here at the paper for students who can’t afford laptops of their own.”
Fresh cup of coffee in hand, Susan sat down behind the laptop, determined to get inside. She’d tried Tori’s birth date, astrological sign, student ID, the Lamount mascot—a bald eagle—plus a few other topics she might have an interest in, most centered on journalism. She even tried the old standby, 1-2-3-4. She thought back to her initial conversation with Eric, and how the person running the artist’s retreat had mentioned how surprised they were that she didn’t show. Susan held her breath as she typed THEGREATERCOLLECTIVE, letting out a quiet cheer when the laptop unlocked.
CHAPTER 25
Back in the van, the doters’ energy was subdued. These maniacs were behaving, Jake thought, as if they’d just come in from a warm, relaxing day at the beach. “That was probably the most excitement I’ve had in years,” he said cheerfully. “Thank you for including me.”
“The night isn’t over, yet, my friend.” Rodent grinned.
Oh no, where might they take me now? Jake wondered. “Oh yah? Where’re we going?”
The doters exchanged a look. Laughing in an esoteric fashion that made Jake uneasy, Rodent said, “Let’s just call it a necessary evil.”
DOTE, Jake thought, seemed to have a lot of those.
He was surprised when the necessary evil turned out to be a party in a sleek penthouse in Pacific Heights. Unlike the gathering at Kimmy’s, which had been a mix of dopey college kids and spiffed-up senior members of DOTE, this gathering was . . . Jake didn’t know what to make of it, or how to frame it in his head. Suspicious and skeevy were the words that rose to the front of his mind.
The party was mainly middle-aged men, most wearing wedding rings. They were plainly rich, paunchy, and some were sweaty, despite the chill in the air. They talked in unnecessarily loud tones, their faces growing increasingly red as the conversations became more boisterous, jaws working in overdrive. But they weren’t the ones who were causing him alarm. It was the other attendees, who ignored everyone in his group except for Rodent, who they greeted with an aura of awe and possibly . . . fear?
“Silicon Valley bigwigs,” Marty explained as he led Jake to the bar area, which was brimming with top-shelf liquor. Next to the drinks were pills of various shapes and sizes, placed in bowls like candy. Marty picked up a crystal decanter of what looked like bourbon and gave it a sniff. “I’m guessing this is Johnnie Walker—these pricks all drink the same stuff. You want?”
Jake shrugged, and Marty poured him a drink, filling their pint glasses nearly to the rim. A pint of whisky! he thought. Drink this fast enough, and I’d be dead before I had a chance to realize how drunk I was.
Jake thought he’d been doing a good job at hiding his disgust, but then Marty said, “He doesn’t force them to be here, you know. Rodent.”
“Who are they?” Jake asked, looking out at the sea of young girls who were mingling with the old creepers. He placed their average age at about twenty. “Are they, um, working girls?” They had to be, he thought given their behavior. When the men spoke, they listened intently, as if they’d never heard anything so fascinating. Their stiff smiles never faltered when the men curled their arms around their waists and pulled them close, whispering lasciviously in their ears. Jake shivered just looking at it.
“Are you asking if they’re hookers?” Marty said with a laugh.
“Aren’t they?”
“No, not at all. They’re doters, like us.” Jake frowned, and Marty clarified: “We all have our individual duties. We assess the strong points of each foot soldier and put them to work for the greater good. For some, it’s providing manual labor at our headquarters, and for others it’s hitting the streets and doing PR. Or it’s partaking in missions, like the one you went on tonight. There are many roles for our soldiers to fill.”
“And these girls, what is it that they’re providing?” Jake asked, doing his best to keep his voice even.
Marty didn’t seem to notice his displeasure. Or, if he did, he didn’t comment on it. He smirked at Kimmy, who was pouring a drink for a white-haired man who had a nose marred by gin blossoms and his hand on her ass. “Every so often, one of our members will land themselves in legal hot water. It comes with the territory. You can’t really make a change without rattling a few cages.” He shrugged.
Jake imagined they were doing more than rattling cages. He was sickened by the scene, and he wanted to go home. He glanced at the clock on the wall, horribly aware that time was running out for him to contact Eric and warn him about the opium spiking.
Marty continued, “We need to maintain positive relationships with those who can help us out in a jam.” He tilted his head, indicating the men in the crowd. “What you’re looking at here are some of the most powerful men in the Bay Area. Since they are indebted to us, they provide us legal and financial help when we need to seek it. And the best part is that it doesn’t cost DOTE a thing, because of our member volunteers.”
But what was it costing the “member volunteers,” who were essentially being pimped out? Jake wondered. “Makes sense,” he said as sincerely as possible, and then he forced himself to wait a few minutes before excusing himself.
On the way to the bathroom, he overheard a man close to fifty ask Rodent if he could provide girls who were younger. He fought the urge to scream when Rodent said that he would see what he could do. The two men then shared a few lines of white powder.
Jake was on the phone as soon as the door was behind him. “Eric! Listen to me,” he hissed. “I don’t have much time to talk.”
“Are you at a bar—it’s loud. What time is it?” Eric asked, sounding groggy and grumpy.
Eric perked up rather quickly, however, as Jake began to outline the night’s events.
CHAPTER 26
“You up for a field trip?” Rodent’s voice chirped in his ear.
Jake checked the time on his phone. “What? It’s like six a.m.”
“Musicians!” Rodent teased, far too chipper for such an early hour. “Come on, man, the early bird catches the worm.”
“I don’t want any worms. I want to go back to sleep,” Jake grumbled, though he was already getting out of bed and pulling on his jeans. He wanted to put up a little fight, be convincing.
“I’ll be there in fifteen! Road trip!”
“Uh, how long? I can’t be gone all day. I have classwork to take care of,” Jake said, trying to get a sense of where they were heading.
“Won’t be gone more than a few hours. I’ll have you back long before the sun goes down.”
“The sun hasn’t even come up,” Jake said sourly, and Rodent barked out a laugh and hung up.
For safety’s sake—and because he was still traumatized from the ecotage mission—Jake made a move to shoot a text to Eric, to inform him that he was hitting the road with Rodent and possibly a few other doters. Then, he reconsidered. Eric had seemed rea
lly pissed when he’d told him about the vandalism he’d participated in with the group—that, after the drunken voice mail he’d left. But it wasn’t just Eric’s anger that bothered Jake; it was the disappointment he so obviously felt about him. Jake had tried to explain that he’d gone to campus with Rodent and his crew to gain their trust, but at the time Eric had been more concerned with reporting the opium spiking in the classroom.
Jake had quickly explained to Eric what had gone down on campus during the call he’d made from the mansion’s bathroom last night. He’d started with the most pressing information, which was that Pascal’s water had been drugged. Naturally, Eric was appalled, but he’d told Jake that he would save his scolding for another time so that he could get to campus and remove the tainted water bottles from the classroom—but how he was going to do that was a concern.
The two men had concocted a plan, which involved Eric driving to campus under the guise of retrieving the cell phone he forgot in his desk. While there, he’d place an emergency call to campus security and claim that he had overheard a group of students discussing the vandalism and the drugging, yet—oh darn it—they’d run away when Eric had commanded them to stop. The story was hokey and far fetched, but it was the best one they could think of to spare Jake from arrest and certain expulsion from LU.
It wasn’t a wonder Eric was not happy with him.
Jake opted not to send Eric a text now. He also decided that he wouldn’t discuss DOTE with him again until he had something concrete and useful to report. He needed to prove that he wasn’t merely going off on some half-cocked mission before he could get back in Eric’s good graces . . . and eventually tell him that he didn’t want to be a teacher’s assistant or study geology anymore.
But one thing at a time.
This morning, it was only Rodent and Kimmy who came to pick him up. “Here,” Kimmy said, handing him a travel mug once he’d settled down into the van.
“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee. He hoped there wasn’t poison in it.
He was feeling paranoid after spoiling DOTE’s plans of drugging Professor Pascal, though they probably had yet to get word about it.
“So, where are we going—don’t tell me, another secret mission? Not sure my ticker could take one of those so early in the morning,” Jake said lightly, though he’d meant what he’d said. He was still feeling ashamed over what he’d done to the engineering building. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the laptop shattering on the floor, the mechanical arm bursting into pieces, the red spray paint dripping down the walls. Though he was not patting himself on the back in any sense, he tried to focus on the positive, which was that Professor Pascal probably would have ingested the opium, had he not reported it. It may have been the only silver lining to the senseless destruction.
“Nope! We’re taking you to our clubhouse,” Kimmy said.
Jake’s pulse quickened. “Oh yah? What for?” Where was this place? Not in the city, that was for sure—it was far behind them, and he could see that they were heading into remote territory.
“I was proud of you last night,” Rodent said over his shoulder, still keeping his eyes on the road as he drove. “Sometimes, people are all talk, you know? They say they want to make a difference, but when push comes to shove, all they do is run and hide. But you, you got right in there and took charge. I respect that. You have true courage, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
“Not just anyone gets to come to the clubhouse,” Kimmy said.
“That’s right. Trust is a shared emotion, and you put your trust in us last night,” Rodent said. “I figured it was only fair that we return the favor.”
Jake grinned. “Aw, I’m touched.” And he was also more than a little terrified. What had he gotten himself into? What was at this clubhouse?
His nervousness deepened as they drove on, drove on . . .
Many people from outside the region assumed that the land surrounding San Francisco was a similarly built-up metropolis. But this wasn’t true. One needn’t drive outside the city for even an hour to find themselves deep in an area where more wild animals dwelled than people. This was the sort of place they seemed to be heading to now. Though the winding highway they took was paved, the side roads that occasionally shot off it were not marked clearly and were devoid of any signs that might give Jake an indication of where they were.
“It’s pretty out here. What area is this?” Jake ventured.
“We’re almost there, friend,” Rodent said, evasive as ever. He pulled over onto the side of the road and extracted a long strip of cloth from the glove box. Handing it to Jake, he said, “I’m afraid you’re going to need to put this on for the rest of the way.”
It was a pillowcase, Jake saw. He glanced at Kimmy and then at Rodent. “Is this really necessary?”
“Don’t take any offense,” Kimmy said. “I had to wear one, too, when I first started coming here. It’s just a precaution.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Jake asked.
“It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s that we don’t trust them,” Rodent said, not specifying whom, exactly, he was speaking about. “It’s for your own protection. If you’re ever taken in for questioning, this way you won’t be able to tell them where we’re located.”
“Good thinking,” Jake said and then he pulled the pillowcase hood over his face. Once again he was wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
An indeterminate time later—Jake found it was harder to keep track of time and distance with the disorienting hood over his face, which he supposed was the point—he felt the road change when they turned off the highway and onto a long dirt driveway.
“Okay, you can take the hood off now,” Rodent said from the front seat, and Jake wasted no time complying. The hood had been hot and uncomfortable, and his face was damp with sweat.
He bounced to and fro as they navigated potholes and tall weeds that had sprouted up in the road. His heartbeat rushed up to his throat as they approached a wide metal gate, and then two armed guards came up to the van to speak with them, a male and a female. The gun the girl held was nearly larger than her entire frame.
Jesus, they’re just kids, he thought, placing their ages at around twenty. It was an echo of the young girls he saw at the party, and he found that he wasn’t all too surprised. Young minds were probably easier to exploit and mold into the shape Rodent thought they should be.
Jake also noted that it was the guards who were answering to Rodent and not the other way around. Seemed he was right in the assumption that Rodent was the area’s leader—or, at minimum, a high-ranking member. Kimmy handed her cell phone over to one of the guards, and then Rodent turned around in the driver’s seat to face him. “They’re going to need your phone.”
Jake laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“’Fraid not,” Rodent said. “It’s the price of entry. Don’t worry—you’ll get it back on the way out.”
At least they’re planning on letting me back out, Jake thought. Although he was not happy about handing over his phone, he did it with a forced smile. “Rules are rules,” he said.
Once the guards waved them through, they continued down the road a couple minutes longer until they came to a stop on a wide, flat patch of earth. “We’re here!” Kimmy said and then hopped out of the van.
“Welcome. Make yourself at home,” Rodent told Jake, and then he was whisked away by a few doters who appeared to have urgent business with him.
Kimmy placed a hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Jake’s jaw dropped as Kimmy led him down a path that opened into a riverfront property that could have doubled for the Garden of Eden. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said proudly.
“Wow, yes,” he answered truthfully, thinking that the land must be worth serious coin. This was no ragtag operation they had set up; it was utterly devoid of the rusted trailers and run-down sheds he’d been expecting after the bumpy journey do
wn the unkempt dirt road that was overtaken by ugly weeds. He wondered where they were getting their funding from. “Don’t tell me this belongs to your father too.”
If Kimmy thought he was fishing for information, she didn’t let on. “No, of course not. One of our wealthier benefactors lets us use the land free of charge.”
And why would anyone let you do that? he wanted to ask. Because there was charity, and then there was charity, and letting a group of young environmental fanatics squat on the land gratis was pushing the limits of human kindness. “That’s so nice.”
The space before him was engulfed by trees so tall that the tops were difficult to make out. Near the riverfront, handmade carved wood furniture had been set out for lounging, and a series of pretty birdhouses were attached to thick posts nearby that featured carved animal faces. Off to his far right was a field with the most beautiful flowers he’d ever seen. “Opium poppies,” she said, watching him admire them.
Which are used for heroin and opium production, he thought. “Beautiful. What are those?” he asked about a series of roundish structures that had been erected on a leveled patch of land. The frames appeared to be made of wood, with canvas stretched down tightly over the tops. They looked almost like igloos.
“Those are our yurts.”
“What’s a yurt? They’re supercool looking, whatever they are.”
“All the higher-level doters have one—it’s sort of a reward for long-term service. I’ll show you mine later,” she said. “They’re an ancient form of nomadic housing that dates back about three thousand years.”
“Nomadic? Do you guys move around a lot?”
